Trump Survives Gun Shot. Trust Jesus in Chaotic Times.

“He rebuked the wind and said to the waves, Peace. Be still. 

Suddenly the wind stopped and there was a great calm. 

Then He asked them Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?  Mark 4: 38-40

My boys loved it when I read the story of Jesus calming the sea to them when they were little. We would stand up and say “the waves went up!!” then drop to our seats and say “the waves went down!!.” When we got to the part where Jesus said Peace. Be still, we would all pause and let the silence draw out. 

Then we’d ask together Why were you afraid? Didn’t you know I was here?

They would ask me to read this story to them over and over. Sometimes we read it three or four times in a single night. There were other stories they loved. The story of little Zacchaeus the tax collector, climbing the tree to see Jesus, and blind Bartimaeus calling “Jesus, son of David, have pity on me!” over the crowd,  were also big faves that we acted out with lots of special voices.

These stories have one thing in common. They tell of desperate people who call out to Jesus for help. In each instance, Jesus stopped what he was doing and helped them. 

The only people Jesus chastised in these stories were the disciples, and that was very mild. He simply asked them how they could be so afraid of a storm when He was right there. Don’t you know, even now, after all you’ve seen me do, Who I Am?

We are going through a storm right now. It is a national storm, and given the immense, world-dominating power of the United States of America, it is also something of a global storm. 

Our country seems to be unraveling right in front of our eyes. The Supreme Court has totally trashed the Constitution, making the president into an absolute dictator with the power to kill anyone he wants, anytime he wants.

We have two candidates for president. One is honest, decent and surprisingly effective, but he is an elderly man who suffers from the lifelong affliction of stuttering. He stammers, fumbles for words and is prone to verbal gaffes. The other, also very elderly, is a convicted sexual predator and felon who lies constantly and says openly that he will use the power of the presidency for vengeance and retribution. 

Last night, the convicted sexual predator candidate survived an assassination attempt. He suffered a flesh wound, a nick to his ear. One person in the crowd was murdered, and two others were critically injured. I’ve read news stories that the shooter, who was killed by the Secret Service, was a 20-year-old man and that he had explosive devices in his car.

Right now, it sounds like another of the endless string of shootings that our country suffers so repeatedly. The difference is that this time, it was aimed at a candidate for the presidency. That made it an assassination attempt. 

This violent act comes only a couple of weeks after the Supreme Court, on behalf of this same candidate, upended the rule of law which has protected us for 248 years from tyranny and dictatorship. It occurred on the heels of an upsetting run of sturm und drang by the press and the other candidate’s political party about whether or not he is too old to be their standard bearer. 

We were already rocking and rolling, slipping and sliding our way across a political floor that is buckling and tilting grotesquely beneath us. Then, this happened. 

We’re like the disciples in the storm, being tossed about on big waves of history that seem likely to sink our ship of state and cast all of us adrift without a lifeboat. 

Can America survive what is being done to it? Will we be living in a free country this time next year? Is America headed for ruthless dictatorship?

What is going to happen to us? What kind of world are we handing on to our grandchildren?

Most Americans are afraid right now. And we have reason to be. 

But the same Jesus who dined with Zacchaeus and healed the blind man; the same Jesus who calmed the storm, is still here with us today. 

He is just as much with us as He was with the disciples in that boat, as He was present when he looked up and saw Zacchaeus, in that tree, as when He heard Bartimaeus crying out “Jesus help me!”

What do you want? He asked them. 

“I want to be free of my guilt and sin; I want to see; I want the terror of these waves to stop,” They answered. 

What do we want? We want — we need — to know that He is here with us in this storm we are enduring. 

We may be living in the last days of American democracy. We may, indeed, be living in the run-up to the last days, period. 

It is our natural human reaction to this chaos and uncertainty to be afraid when the waves and wind of historic events are tossing us around. Thanks to our endless methods of instant communication, the world is too much present for us to have a moment’s rest. 

We get pounded mercilessly by the force of events thousands of miles removed from us that are happening to people we don’t know and will never meet. Each battering wave of current events takes a toll on our psyche. It pounds our peace and shatters our calm. 

When Wordsworth wrote, “the world is too much with us” he could not have imagined how completely the world would come to be too much with us; to overwhelm and fracture people in the 21^st century. 

These waves of chaos and history are going to keep coming. We are going to be pounded mercilessly in the next few months. Our democracy is on the line. We are sitting at the fulcrum of history. We are deciding the future of the world.  

It appears that the only way out of this maelstrom is to go through it. But we are not alone in this reality. 

Jesus is with us. It is our fate to live through these historic times.  It is also our privilege to stand for Christ and His teachings; to live out the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes in these trying circumstances. 

That takes courage. It means giving up the fake certainties of our self-righteousness and following Him with blind faith through this present darkness. We can’t do that without His help.

Instead of giving way to panic and terror, turn to Jesus. I don’t think He’s going to  stop this storm and get us out of what we must face. But I know — and I mean I know — that He will calm the storm inside of us. 

Turn to HIm. Ask Him. Ask Him for the peace that passes all understanding. Ask Him for courage. Ask Him for the ability to love the people around us. He’ll give it to you. 

Ask the Lord Jesus to calm the storm inside of you, and you will feel the manifestation of the words Peace. Be still. in your own soul. 

“As evening came, Jesus said to His disciples, “Let’s cross to the other side of the lake. So they took Jesus in the boat and started out … but soon a fierce storm came up. High waves were breaking into the boat and it began to fill with water.

Jesus was sleeping at the back of the boat with his head on a cushion. The disciples woke Him up, shouting, “Teacher! Don’t you care that we are going to drown?”

When Jesus woke up, He rebuked the wind and said to the waves, Peace. Be still.

Suddenly the wind stopped and there was a great calm.

Then He asked them Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?  Mark 4: 35-40