Skip to main content

Walking the Way - Sleepers in a storm

 


Jonah 1:6

So the captain came and said to him, “What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your god! Perhaps the god will give a thought to us, that we may not perish.”

Thought for the day – Sleeping through the storm

Have you ever been woken up at the worst possible moment? The captain in Jonah finds Jonah fast asleep in the hold while the ship is breaking apart. “What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your God!” It’s a rebuke from a pagan sailor to a man of God.

 

Jonah is sleeping because he’s exhausted from running from God. He’s gone down into the ship, down into the hold, down into sleep. It’s the sleep of someone who has closed their heart to God and is worn down by his rebellion.

Compare that to Mark 4. There’s another storm, another boat, and another sleeper. But Jesus isn’t sleeping because he’s running. He sleeps because he’s resting in the Father’s hands. The disciples wake him with a very Jonah-shaped question: “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” And this time, when the sleeper wakes, he doesn’t say “throw me overboard.” He says, “Peace! Be still,” and the storm obeys.

 

Jonah had to be thrown into the sea to save the sailors. Jesus stands in the boat and calms the sea, and then goes down into the deep for us, three days and nights, as he himself said.

So my question today is: where are you sleeping today? Is it the sleep of running from God, or the sleep of trusting in God?

This blog post is part of the Walking the Way Podcast series. All views expressed in this essay are those of the author. This essay is freely available under Creative Commons License with Attribution-ShareAlike, allowing users to share it in other mediums/formats and adapt/translate the content as long as an attribution link, indication of changes, and the same Creative Commons License applies to that material.

 

This work is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What does it mean to put Jesus first?

What does it mean to put Jesus first? John 12:1-8   Philippians 3:4b-13 What does it mean to put Jesus first? I ask this because as always I try to find a link between the two lectionary readings and as I was thinking about the readings the thing that I recognized across both these passages was the thought that both Mary and Paul are putting Jesus first. In John, we have this wonderful account of Mary anointing Jesus. It’s a passage we think we know reasonably well. It’s not the only account of Jesus being anointed, and most Biblical scholars agree that this account is the same as the accounts found in Luke and Matthew. Details vary but essentially it is the same account. In the account we see Jesus reclining at a table and then Mary prostrates herself at Jesus’ feet and empty’s a whole jar of nard on Jesus. And then wipes Jesus feet with her hair. Two things strike me here. Firstly Nard was not cheap. John notes that is was the equivalent of a year’s worth of wag...
7 comments
Read more
 Holiness What does holiness look like to you? Or when you hear the word holy what comes to mind. The reason I’m asking is because for a while now I have been thinking about holiness. What does it mean to be holy and whether or not we can truly be holy? We are commanded to be holy both in the Old Testament and by Jesus who said be holy as your Father in heaven is holy (Matthew 5:48).  John Wesley taught that genuine faith produces inward and outward holiness. He consistently argued that salvation must produce holiness of heart and life, but he never viewed the process as something that would be completed. He taught that despite the inner assurance and regeneration of character that results from knowing that you have been saved, it is never too long before we discover that there is still a root of sin within. However, there is never an occasion or state of true Christian discipleship that does not lead to a deepening of our love for God and for our neighbour and we become mo...
Post a Comment
Read more
Ecclesiastes 3:1 There is an occasion for everything, and a time for every activity under heaven   Thought for the day The blogger Jill Printzenhoff writes about a time how she went fishing and caught nothing and yet the fisherman next to her managed to pull out seven. They were using different bait and she describes it as not her day. She finishes her blog post with these words: ‘You keep striving, you keep working, and you keep on keeping on. Because some day when you cast your line . . . you will be at the right spot at the right time . . . and that day will be your day . . . the day you catch that all elusive fish!’ I believe that there is a time for everything under heaven and earth and sometimes, well actually, all the time we need to be patient and wait because the reality of the situation is we are working to God’s time. The writer of Ecclesiastes also says this about God’s timing: ‘He has made everything appropriate[b] in its time. He has also put eternity in...
Post a Comment
Read more