Is Jesus In Your Boat?

As parents, when our children are very small, we keep a constant, watchful eye on them. As they grow, so does our confidence that they can play, or be otherwise engaged, for longer periods of time without our checking on them. We don't watch our kindergartners as we would our newborns, nor our teens as our kindergartners. We learn (most of us, anyway) that we can trust our children to 'behave' when we're not present, and they learn to trust us to be there when they need us. As the years accumulate, our children mature into young adults that are not 'clingy' or 'needy' as toddlers or infants would be. They learn to have a healthy respect for the dependence and independence they have in their lives.

When my children were babies, my older daughter developed  her independence early on. Then my younger daughter came along a short time later; she cried constantly. She was four years old before she slept through the night, whereas the older had began sleeping through the night at three weeks. She would allow no one to hold her but me; not even her father could hold her more than a few minutes before she would start to cry for me. I'll never know what the problem was but, thankfully, by the time she was eighteen months old, she had 'grown out of it.' But in her early weeks and months, there was definitely a level of insecurity that, to me, miraculously worked  itself out.

That whole scenario makes me look at the story of Jesus calming the storm a little closer. Most mothers, and people in general, would agree that there is nothing more beautiful, or peaceful, than a sleeping baby. I can't help but have the same feeling toward Jesus asleep in the boat, crossing the rough waters during the storm. For Jesus, the tossing water acted as a rocking cradle, while the wind howled a lullaby. Here is the man that had performed miracle after miracle, had throngs of people approach Him for teaching and healing, and besides all that, He spent a lot of nights alone in prayer with His Father. His body was tired-He needed the rest.

But all the disciples could do was worry about the oncoming storm. How many times had they sailed those same waters before? And how long had they been following Jesus when this happened? Surely long enough to know that He would protect them from all harm. But these children didn't want to play unsupervised. Here they were, in their adolescent discipleship, acting like toddlers. The storm would have passed-that's what storms do. The winds that were helping Jesus to sleep would have continued to carry the dark clouds away where they would do no one any harm. He admonished them-where was their faith?-and calmed the storm that would have passed on its own anyway.

Are there times when we 'wake' Jesus to whine and complain about our present condition when, by the very nature of the problem, it will pass? Do we have enough faith in Jesus to know that He will be there for us when we need Him? The lesson Jesus taught them (and should teach us) was that He is ever present, always protecting, even when it looks like He doesn't know what's going on.

So, the question to answer is: Is Jesus in your boat?