Where is Your Faith?

The other night my daughter went camping in the woods. I awoke with a fearful dream about a bear attacking her. I tried to sleep and the image of the dream kept recurring. I checked her location at 3 am and it was showing somewhere that wasn’t her campground and instead located her on a spot called Trapper’s Trail.

I woke Shann, who needs sleep after an immersive schedule, hoping he could remove my anxiety. He recommended my verses and poems I have memorized.

Quoting Psalm 27, I fell asleep and then startled awake with another image of the bear and a poem by Mary Oliver that says, “When death comes like a hungry bear in Autumn” ruminating in my mind.

That did it. I got up and went to pray and read.

I open the scripture to Luke 8 and read about the disciples in the boat during a storm. They also feel terror; mine is fully imagined, their terror is actually real. There is a storm swamping the boat. They are seasoned fishermen and believe the storm they are facing leads to death. Perhaps they have witnessed men pulled from the water after such a storm.

Theirs is a practical knowledge and what they are experiencing is terror. They know Jesus is exhausted to the point He is in the deepest sleep. The sound of the gale, the waves, the water pouring into the boat, the men working to stay alive do not wake Him.

At the apex of their helplessness, they cry out to Jesus, “Master, we perish!” It is a resolute certainty.

Jesus immediately calms the storm. It is a humbling, awe-inducing, jaw-dropping miracle. A massive otherworldly miracle. From storm to calm in a moment.

But Jesus Himself does not comfort their spirits. He comforts them physically but He challenges their hearts. He asks, “Where is your faith?”

This is the major question asked of all of us in life’s storms, anxieties, dreams, dreadful situations either imagined or experienced.

This is the choice. When the logic, the options, the evidence, the certainty, the proven experience, the work ethic all lead to the conclusion- we are perishing- Jesus still points us back to hope.

Hope is what is not yet seen. It is the trust and deepest belief that God loves us and is faithful. We cannot perish. Yes, the body may pass away, but the soul redeemed is forever held in the love of God.

Where is my faith?

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, "FOR YOUR SAKE WE ARE BEING PUT TO DEATH ALL DAY LONG; WE WERE CONSIDERED AS SHEEP TO BE SLAUGHTERED." But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. - Romans 8:35-39