Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Back of the Boat

So last week at church, Pastor D was up from our adopted church in Nicholson, MS. He spoke, of course, on weathering the storms of life and his text was, of course, the story in Mark of Jesus sleeping in the back of the boat as the disciples faced a storm on the Sea of Galillee. Now, while not all of the disciples were fishermen, a goodly number were, so there was some boating experience there. These weren't all complete novices, and those who _did_ know something about boats also knew that particular sea and its penchant for suddent, violent storms.

But even with their experience and knowledge, they were still scared witless and couldn't fathom how Jesus could be in the back of the boat, sleeping, while they were battling this storm and (ostensibly) losing.

Now, I've had a teacher in the past teach that there were two conclusions that could be drawn from those facts:
a) Jesus didn't care that they were all about to die
b) Jesus wasn't concerned because He knew that they _weren't_ about to die.

The disciples chose conclusion a, when the correct conclusion was obviously b.

So, in my pride, I thought that, since I knew that Jesus _cared_ about the current storm in my life (no job), that therefore, I must automatically be concluding b - that He had it all under control and was sitting back because He knew that. But I realized that there's actually a third conclusion that the disciples could have drawn:
c) Maybe they weren't as skilled at handling boats as they thought.

All the while that I was patting myself on the back for ostensibly concluding b, I was really concluding c - that maybe I wasn't as good at engineering as I thought I was. Now while I could probably have used some humbling in that regard, I took it past where it needed to go. I'm not saying that I was bemoaning my lack of marketability.....but I was definitely beginning to lose confidence.

So....in response, I've started trying to block out those kinds of thoughts and _actually_ trust that God's got it under control. Maybe there hasn't been a huge, visible change.....but it's good to know that the third conclusion exists and that it's still not the right one.

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