Be Still and Know that I am God

Summary

When I was seven, my two brothers and I stayed with our Grandma for a few weeks while my parents were traveling in Finland, Sweden and the USSR.  It was a fun time for us city-boys for my Mom’s mother lived in a town of one hundred and thirty people in the middle of farm country.  We were able to visit the farms of our Grandma’s friends, and explore the surrounding farm towns, and help her work her garden through the long summer days.  We had a fun summer, but it had its moments.

The American Great Plains can produce some of the nastiest weather on earth. Specifically I am speaking of tornadoes, the cyclonic winds that can rip a town apart and kill anyone in its path.

One night, in the middle of that summer, my Grandma woke us up, urgently, telling us to get down into the basement.  We groggily followed her orders, all the while asking, “What’s the matter?  What’s wrong?  What are we doing?”

On the windows of her little house we could hear rain hitting the glass, and outside, the winds howling, all the while my Grandma, was urging us down the basement steps.  “Hurry boys, hurry! We have to get into the corner.  Come on now.  Hurry!”

It was only once we were cowering in the corner, that she told us there was a Tornado Warning for her town, and every town and farm in the path of the powerful storm rocking her house with its winds.

For a seven-year old, this was scary, and I admit, exciting all at the same time.  Yet, though I felt fear, I also knew the comforting presence of my Grandma the entire time.  Her calm voice, and comforting ways saw us through the night.

The violent storm was scary, obviously since I remember it over forty years later, but my Grandma and her calm manner, was my quiet, my stillness within the storm.

As I pondered this morning’s gospel, this story from my childhood came to mind for obviously, there are similarities between my storm and that upon the Sea of Galilee.

When Jesus and the disciples decided to cross the Sea of Galilee the weather must have been at least okay, or those fishermen wouldn’t have chanced the crossing, they were seasoned sailors.  Yet, as we read, by the time they’re out in the middle they’re fearing for their lives and calling to God for help.  He was there, and once Jesus had rubbed the sleep from his eyes and said a few words, the sea became as calm as glass.  God’s power had stilled the storm.

I know that life too often can seem like a voyage upon the sea.  We sail out of port with beautiful skies, which turn dark and foreboding once we’re upon the high seas and we find ourselves sailing straight into a storm.  Soon our boat is pitching as it is thrown from wave to wave and we feel as if the next moment could be the end and that we won’t be able to take it anymore, and then the winds lessen in their ferocity and before long the waves lap at the hull and we realize we have survived.  The horizon is open and the skies are blue.

Of course the storms of our lives are experienced in many places and in many ways.  Lightning strikes in a hospital room as you have to say your earthly good bye to a loved one.  You hear a thunderclap in the slamming of the door as your spouse leaves, for the final time.  Terrible winds tear at you as you fight cancer, or heart trouble, or diabetes or depression, buffeting you constantly and always threatening to capsize your life and leave you to drown.  The rains seem to never stop, always threatening to flood your life as you struggle to pay your debts, provide for your family, fix the car.

I could go on, listing the storms of life, but I don’t need to, we all know them well enough.

Like the disciples we can find ourselves in situations in which we fear for our very lives, calling out to the Lord and hoping he’ll hear us in our time of need.

He does.  God hears us and God is present and God is at work in the difficult times of life.  God lives with us in the storms, walking by our side as we struggle, as we cry, as we fear that we won’t make it.  God is there.

Yet God’s presence does not mean that we are saved from life’s storms.  God’s presence does not mean there won’t be pain or hurt or difficulty.  When we call and the Lord hears, the storm does not necessarily end or even lessen in ferocity.

What am I saying, you ask?  Doesn’t God care enough for us to make it all stop, to make the storms go away?   Doesn’t God want us to be free from hurt and pain?  Doesn’t God care what happens to us?

It’s not that at all.  What I am saying is that God cares for us so much that he’s willing to walk through the storms by our side.  I am pointing out that our Lord and Savior loves us so much that he cries along with us, feeling our pain like it’s his own.  I am telling you, that in the midst of the storms of our lives Jesus speaks into our souls the words that he spoke to the winds and waves in the gospel, “Quiet.  Be still.”

Rather than calming the storms of our lives, God wants to calm our hearts that we may be able to deal with the storms of our lives.  In psalm 46 we can hear these words, “Be still and know that I am God.”

What God wants us to hear, is that we do not need to walk through the troubles of life, alone, Jesus walks with us.  We do not need to fall prey to the idea that life is for nothing, or simply that we live and then we die.  No, God has purpose and meaning for each of our lives.   Within God’s love for the world, for each person and each part of his creation there lays meaning for you and me, meaning that can see us through each of life’s storms.  The apostle Paul understood this, and was trying to tell the believers in Corinth this very same thing.  Listen to Paul’s words from Second Corinthians 4, as they are shared in the Bible translation, The Message.

“It started when God said, ‘Light up the darkness!’ and our lives filled up with light as we saw and understood God in the face of Christ, all bright and beautiful…  We’ve been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we’re not demoralized; we’re not sure what to do, but we know that God knows what to do; we’ve been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn’t left our side; we’ve been thrown down, but we haven’t broken. What they did to Jesus, they do to us-trial and torture, mockery and murder; what Jesus did among them, he does in us-he lives!”

In the midst of the storms of life Jesus tells us to quiet our souls and be still.  He wants us to focus upon the gift he has given us.  Jesus wants us to realize that we are filled with life, his life. He wants us to know that he will see us through all that life can throw at us.  He will even help us to grow and become stronger and more filled with his life and love because of the storms we’ve weathered.  Learning to feel the joy and know the true happiness that comes by walking through life with God and being filled with Jesus love, is God’s gift for you, it is salvation.

Then when the storms surround us and buffet us with their strength, we shall be able to find strength by listening to Jesus’ words, “Quiet.  Be still.”  And, we shall know he is our God.

Amen.

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