Peace in chaos
And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. -Mark 4:39 ESV
The techniques that I described in last week’s post are mainly aimed at people who find it difficult to calmly approach various daily stresses. Some of you reading that probably thought you didn’t need the advice, and that’s fair. But we all do face scary situations in life from time to time and most of us would probably hope to be able to face them calmly and rationally.
When it really hits the fan, the statement I made last week still rings true. It still helps nothing to panic, even in a crisis. It is possible to have peace in the midst of chaos. Jesus showed us the way.
While out on a boat with His disciples, a big storm came and tossed the little boat all around. If you imagine yourself in this situation, you can hardly blame the disciples for being scared. When they woke up Jesus (Yes, He was napping through the storm), He calmly stood and rebuked the storm and the storm calmed.
I was recently reading a passage in my study Bible (from 2 Kings 6:15-17) and in the footnotes I found this little nugget of wisdom: “Oftentimes our fear and anxiety are the result of spiritual blindness…When fear and anxiety strike at our hearts, we must pray that God would open our eyes by faith to the fullness of reality that can be found only in His Son.”
So I ask you this, if your eyes were open to what God was doing in any given situation, would you still fear or panic? When I asked myself this question, I thought through some scenarios where I have been scared because something unexpected happened and I didn’t know what the outcome would be. I thought about how I might have reacted if I was fully aware of the presence and work of God in that moment. It brought me calm just reflecting. Being on the other side of those past events, it’s not too hard to see how God worked because I know how they ended up working out. If I would have prayed in the moment and trusted Him, I’ll bet I’d have had a better outlook than what I had back then.
Peace is possible in chaos and trouble - if we trust God to take care of it all. Even when we don’t see Him working, He’s there.