Optimist’s Roundtable

By Martha Sykes

“God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform; He plants His footsteps in the sea, and rides upon the storm.” These words are from a poet by the name of William Cowper, and as I was reading about Jesus calming the storm in the gospel of Mark, chapter 4, and watching the news about the damage from the hurricanes in the south, I couldn’t help but pray for God to calm that storm and help our neighbors down south.

In this scripture, Jesus had just spent a long day beside the sea of Galilee, teaching a crowd of people about the kingdom of God. As evening approached, he said to His disciples, “Let’s go over to the other side.” So they all climbed into a boat and started their trip across the sea. Then all of a sudden, a furious and very windy storm began to rock their boat!

And it made it all the more scary because it happened at night.

If you are familiar with his story, you know that Jesus fell asleep in the back of the boat, and the disciples were afraid they might not survive. They were so scared that they woke Jesus and asked, “Teacher, do you not care if we perish?”

This question that the disciples asked makes us wonder if we at times, when a sudden storm arises in our lives, do we ask that same question? We can only wonder if the people down south were asking that question.

Every believer goes through a time when we are so overwhelmed with the storms of this life that we feel helpless and our faith causes us to cry out to Jesus just like those disciples in that boat! We may think He is sleeping, but we are reminded in scripture That he never slumbers nor sleeps.

In this world, we live in, storms of all kinds surround us, but it is our decision every day to trust our Heavenly Father to take our fears away.