When the World Takes the Wind Out of Your Sails

Moore, James W.

ISBN 10: 1426711352 / ISBN 13: 9781426711350

Editore: Abingdon Press, 2010

Item in good condition. Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc. Codice articolo 00103619280

Riassunto:

An exploration of how, even in the worst of times, nothing separates believers from God's presence

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When the World Takes the Wind Out of Your Sails

By James W. Moore

Abingdon Press

Copyright © 2010 The United Methodist Publishing House
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4267-1135-0

Chapter One

Remember That Our Hope Is in God

Scripture: Mark 4:35-41

In January of 1983, I was privileged to visit the Holy Land for the first time. On that trip, our travel group spent two days in the city of Tiberius, which is located on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee.

To this day when I think of Tiberius, three vivid images jump quickly into my mind. First, I recall that on our first night there, a small earthquake hit nearby, sending a dramatic tremor through our hotel. Now, that will get your attention and sear itself into your memory forever.

Second, I remember being surprised by the size of the Sea of Galilee. Actually as bodies of water go, the Sea of Galilee is really rather small. It's only thirteen miles long, north to south, and only eight miles across at its widest span. There are lakes in Texas that size and indeed even much larger.

Third, I remember watching a storm develop on the Sea of Galilee. It came with amazing quickness and with no warning. One minute the sun was shining brightly, the winds were calm, and the water was still as glass. But then, out of the blue, the storm sprang up. Harsh gusts of wind began to blow, and in no more than fifteen minutes the sea was white with large foam-crested waves. Great billowing waves crashed on the shoreline, and over a hundred yards from the lakeside you could feel the spray of water kicked up by the storm. In just a matter of minutes, the still, glassy water and the clear blue sky had given way to a violent, raging storm.

Mark's Gospel (in chapter 4) records just such a storm, a storm that came with frightening suddenness and intensity. It lashed against the boat that was carrying Jesus and his disciples. The disciples, "scared out of their wits," rush to Jesus for help. Of all things, can you imagine this? He was sound asleep, resting peacefully on a pillow in the stern of the ship. He was completely at peace in the midst of a storm. There must be a sermon there somewhere.

The original Greek words here are vivid and they add greatly to the drama of the story. In the original Greek text the storm is called a seismos, the Greek word for "earthquake." Seismos gives us our word "seismograph," which is the instrument we use today to record the intensity of an earthquake. The implication is that the storm in Mark 4 was like an earthquake at sea.

Another interesting Greek word here is kaluptesthai, which means "completely hidden." The waves were so high that the boat was "completely hidden" as the waves crested and towered over it and tossed it to and fro.

The disciples were understandably terrified by this sudden turn of events. Only moments before, Jesus had been teaching from this boat as it sat calmly in the quiet and peaceful waters, but now the boat was being hurled about violently by the mad waves of the raging sea. "Wake up, teacher, wake up," they shout to him, shaking his shoulder with panic in their eyes. And then, just a bit irritated with him for being able to sleep in such dangerous circumstances, they question him: "Don't you care? We are all about to be killed here. Are you going to sleep through this? Don't you even care?" And then in his special way, Jesus rises to the occasion. He stands up and speaks out, and he calms the storm.

When I was a young boy growing up in Memphis, Tennessee, I went to St. Mark's Methodist Church. I can remember vividly the Sunday evening services we had in that little neighborhood church. We would almost always have an informal hymn sing and sometimes the congregation would call out our "request hymns." One favorite hymn almost always called for was number 273 in the old Cokesbury Hymnal. It was called "Peace! Be Still!" It was based on this Scripture passage in Mark 4. Remember the words:

    Master, the tempest is raging!
    The billows are tossing high!
    The sky is o'er-shadowed with blackness,
    No shelter or help is nigh;
    "Carest Thou not that we perish?"
    How canst Thou lie asleep,
    When each moment so madly is threat'ning
    A grave in the angry deep?"

    Then in the Refrain, Jesus gives his answer:

    "The winds and the waves obey my will—
    Peace, be still! Peace, be still!
    Whether the wrath of the storm-tossed sea,
    Or demons, or men, or whatever it be,
    No water can swallow the ship where lies
    The Master of ocean and earth and skies;
    They all shall sweetly obey My will;
    Peace, be still! Peace, peace be still.
    They all shall sweetly obey My will;
    Peace, peace, be still!"

This miracle story in Mark 4 is a powerful parable for us anytime, but especially it's relevant for us whenever we have to face the storms of life. No one of us is immune. The storms will come for all of us. We can be sure of that. And sometimes the harsh storms can knock us down and absolutely take the wind out of our sails. What do we do then? How do we get back up and make it through the storm? There are many lessons here in this powerful story in Mark 4. Let me underscore three of them. I'm sure you will think of others.

The First Lesson Here Is That Life Is Uncertain

The storm came so quickly. The situation changed so rapidly. Life is like that, isn't it? It's so uncertain. We see it again and again in the Scriptures. Like Jesus and his disciples, we can be sailing along peacefully under clear blue skies with everything looking so promising and so bright. But suddenly, so suddenly, the clouds gather, the skies darken and rumble, the winds blow, and so quickly we find ourselves caught in the fury of a storm, a storm that alarms and shakes our world.

So quickly it can happen. In the early part of the decade of the 1990s, the prospect for peace looked so promising. The Cold War had thawed, the Berlin Wall had come down. All over the world, people were so hopeful that we could finally have a lasting peace.

But then, a small defenseless nation was aggressively invaded and the Gulf War began. Innocent people far from the battlefields became the targets of SCUD missiles. In defiance of the Geneva Convention, prisoners of war became the victims of ruthless mistreatment. The earth was scorched. The environment was attacked. The gulf was contaminated. And suddenly, most of us had loved ones caught in the eye of the storm.

Just a few months earlier, our son graduated from college. When our family arrived on the university campus for the graduation exercises, one of his former roommates, a fun-loving young man, met us with a gracious offer. Our son's roommate was not graduating this time around, so he volunteered to take our video camera and to move about the arena and make a creative video tape of the graduation for us. With a warm smile, he said to us: "Now, you all find a good seat, sit down and relax and enjoy the commencement exercises and be the proud family, and I will be your camera-man." Well, he did that for us. He made the video, accompanied by his own fresh and witty narration of the big event.

At the time, he (just twenty-two years old then) was a laid-back, easy-going, free-spirited college student, having the time of his life. Just a few short weeks later, he was in a tent in the Saudi Arabian Desert, just twenty miles south of the Kuwait border. And when the ground war started, he was one of the first Marines to see action.

That young man served our country well and bravely and is safely back home now, but the point is clear and the message is important: life is uncertain, because the storms can hit so swiftly. The changes can happen so promptly. The dangers can come so rapidly. All can be so calm and peaceful and then so quickly, so forcefully, the storms can come into our lives with amazing suddenness.

That's the first lesson here: Life is so uncertain.

Now, This Leads Us to a Second Lesson—Namely, We Need to Prepare Ahead

When the storm hit, Jesus was relaxed, poised, and confident because of the deep spiritual resources he had built up ahead of time. He had prepared. We see the opposite of this in Shakespeare's play The Tempest. There, when the storm hit, the mariners ran to and fro shouting in desperation: "All is lost! To prayers! To prayers! All is lost! To prayers!"

You see, for them, faith was nothing more than a last ditch effort, a last resort, something you turn to only when all else fails. Not so with Jesus. For him, faith was a daily lifestyle, a way of life that conditioned him, prepared him, and gave him the spiritual strength to face the harsh storms that came his way.

A few years ago, I wrote a book titled Noah Built His Ark in the Sunshine—that is, he prepared in the sunshine for the flood that was to come. The people laughed at him. They made fun of him. They told him that what he was doing was ridiculous and unnecessary. After all, the sun was shining. Why waste time building an ark? But Noah kept on building, and when the troubled waters came he was prepared, he was ready, he was equipped and able to ride out the storm.

Now, let me tell you something. We need to build an ark in the sunshine. We need to prepare ahead of time for the storms of life that will inevitably explode with fury into our lives. Somewhere down the line, maybe even when we least expect it, there is a storm waiting for you and me; and if we haven't prepared, if we haven't built up inner resources of spiritual strength, it will sweep us under.

During the Vietnam War, a friend of mine went through four horrendous years as a POW. To this day, he attributes his survival to his faith in God. He tells of the awful abuse, the torture, the cruel and inhumane treatment that he and others endured. And he remembers what gave him the courage to hold on. Over and over, he repeated those words he learned as a child in Sunday school, words he had carried through his youth, words that shaped his philosophy of life as an adult.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me. (Psalm 23:4 KJV)

[Nothing] will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:39)

The great biblical promise of God is to always be with us. That promise kept my friend alive and sane and hopeful. The advance spiritual preparation in his life served him well and saved him in the time of storm. No question about it, life is uncertain. We need to prepare ahead to face the storms that are certain to come.

This Brings Us to The Third and Final Lesson, the Most Important One of All, Namely This: Our Hope Is in God!

When the storm hit, the disciples turned to Jesus for help, and he came through for them. Now, when we read this story in Mark 4 closely, we see that Jesus actually calmed two different storms, the one without and the one within. He stilled the storm of fury lashing at the boat, and he stilled the storm of fear raging inside the disciples.

Remember how William Barclay put it. He said, "In this story, there is something much more than just the calming of a storm at sea. That's here to be sure. But on a deeper level, the meaning of this story is that wherever Jesus is, the storms of life become calm. It means that in the presence of Jesus, the most terrible of tempests turns to peace" (William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, The Daily Study Bible Series, revised edition [Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1975], 318).

Barclay knew this from experience. Some years ago, as suddenly as that storm in Mark 4 came to the Sea of Galilee, a storm struck abruptly, violently, shatteringly into his life. His twenty-one-year-old daughter and her fiancé were both drowned in a yachting accident just days before they were to be married. William Barclay was crushed, devastated. He said that sudden, horrible, tragic event lashed at the very fiber of his soul.

But somehow, as never before, he knew the presence of Christ. Somehow he felt Christ with him and within him, stilling the storm in his heart, bringing confidence and strength and poise. Through that experience he learned that no matter what tempest of trouble or pain or sorrow may blow upon our lives, with Christ there is calm, there is victory, there is inner peace in stormy times. (See William Barclay's Spiritual Autobiography [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmanns, 1975] 45.)

It is significant to note that the greatest expressions of faith historically do seem to come in times of storm. Just as good parents want to be close to their children most of all when their children are hurting, even so when the harsh storms of life strike, God does seem to draw even closer to us. It's more likely that God's there close to us all along, but somehow in the storms we tune in better to God's presence and strength.

During World War II, Edward R. Murrow reported that during the toughest moment of the war, he saw a sign tacked on the side of a church. It was crudely lettered and it read: "If your knees knock, kneel on them."

So, when the storms come and the world takes the wind out of our sails, what do we do? Well, we do what the disciples did: We turn to Christ for help! We realize that our hope is in God and that he has the power to still the storms of life. But then what do we pray for? We pray for a quick and lasting peace without, and for a strong eternal peace within.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from When the World Takes the Wind Out of Your Sailsby James W. Moore Copyright © 2010 by The United Methodist Publishing House. Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Titolo: When the World Takes the Wind Out of Your ...
Casa editrice: Abingdon Press
Data di pubblicazione: 2010
Legatura: Brossura
Condizione: Good