It’s ten days out from getting on a plane. The room is finally cleaned; Mom is coming down today to see her oldest kid before he goes off to parts unknown; the weather outside is muggy and something like a dirty dishrag.
I haven’t even thought about packing yet.
Last night, as I met with a group from church, we prayed through a passage of Scripture in Mark where Jesus calms the waters. A familiar passage, one I’ve thought about or heard a thousand times. The point of the exercise was what is called lectio devina, a holy reading of Scripture wherein you listen for God to speak as the Scripture is read. As I listened the first time, I was overwhelmed with the sense of powerlessness in the picture. Part of this no doubt was thoughts of Kenya rushing in, fueling my thinking as I prepare to do this trip I’ve been plotting for four years now. I love travel; I love being out in new places with my heart beating in my chest a little faster from having no familiarity with the things around me, of being in a remote part of the world with no connection. It’s kind of a rush.
But as I listened to the story again, I stuck on the word “perishing”, describing the disciples in the boat, their fear, their destiny of being at the bottom of the lake. And it occurred to me as Jesus calmed the storm that it was not the disciples alone who were in peril of perishing in this story, but nature itself that was at risk of perishing. And in that moment, I felt sorry for the storm, for it too suffered from disorder, of living in destruction instead of peace. The wind and waves roared, tearing themselves apart, to be silenced and set right by Jesus’ calm word: nature and humanity set right at the same word of Jesus. If we take Paul’s word in Romans at face value, that creation itself groans waiting for its redemption, I see no reason to not think that nature itself is a twisted smile of its making by a good God.
It follows that in the voice of Jesus there is a calm that sets all things right, not merely for the soul or for the individual, but for the whole scene: for governments, for wars, for famines and poverty, for conflicts and discord. The word of Jesus is not one for the soul primarily, but for the body and the soul, for the world of which people are a part. The peace of Jesus in the midst of storms is not reduced to simply giving us calm in the midst of wild circumstances, but for the making of peace in the presence of a world which would otherwise tear itself apart. The giving of peace was for people and storms alike; so we go, to challenge the storms of the world–not as separate phenomenon, but as one manifestation of the same storm, the same discord threatening to destroy itself, and needing quiet.
