Have you ever had a Scooby Doo/Shaggy moment? You know,
those moments where you are constantly afraid something bad is going to happen,
so you relish in your worry, but ultimately it all works out in the end; therefore,
the worry and freak out session was completely unnecessary…I know I have had my
fair share of Scooby moments where instead of just asking and praying for God
to help me in the situation, I will worry and overanalyze EVERYTHING. Worry
really is a waste of time. It’s like lying on the couch all day trying to
figure out what you are going to do and never deciding; it gets you nowhere.
Every morning, I try to start my day by reading my Bible; additionally,
I have gotten into the habit of praying prior to opening His Word and asking
God to please direct me to what he wants me to read in order to let that
Scripture speak to me. This past Sunday morning I opened up to Matthew 8:28-27
where Jesus calms the storm. The synopsis is that Jesus gets in a boat and
heads out on the Sea of Galilee with the disciples, goes below deck to catch
some Zs, a “Perfect Storm”-esqu monstrosity starts swirling and whirling the
boat, and the disciples start to f-r-e-a-k out! They are running around
screaming and yelling, “Save us!! We’re going to drown!” Jesus hears his
disciples, wakes up from his slumber, and says (excuse my paraphrase), “Yo
fellas, why are you wigging out? Where’s the faith? You know this storm is
nothing compared to the power of God…come on now, calm yourselves.” Then, bada
bing, bada boom, Jesus told the storm to stop, and stop it did.
After I
read through this passage, I read through the footnotes in my study Bible and
this part particularly stood out to me: “We often encounter storms in our life,
where we feel God can’t or won’t work. When we truly understand who God is,
however, we will realize that he controls both the storms of nature and the storms
of the troubled heart. Jesus’ power that calmed this storm can also help us
deal with the problems we face. Jesus is willing to help if we only ask him. We
should never discount his power even in terrible trials.” As the words tumbled
gracefully off the page and took ground within my mind and heart, I began to
think of the metaphorical storms that happen in life. In fact, I began to think
about how I have not only been hearing and feeling the wind, but the crash of
the thunder, pelts of the hail, and flashes of lightning these past couple of
months. I began to think of how I can often be like those disciples and as soon
as the storms began to take root, I flail about with worry and get completely stressed out. While
these thoughts swirled through my mind, I also began to think of how faithful
God truly is, was, and will be. While, yes, these past few months have indeed
been the most trying times in my life, I feel they have been some of the most
revealing as well. For instance, I have seen the power of prayer come forth, I
have seen God’s love in human form be not only placed next to me, but envelop
me into feeling and knowing what it truly means to come alongside someone and
be a comfort, a strength, and a provider. Furthermore, I have seen how relying
on God and trusting in Him is the difference between moving forward or giving
up; how it is the difference between calm and worry. I know that the storms of
life will come, it is just so comforting and such a wake-up call to really
understand that when we trust in the power of God to take control and let His
will be done, life just seems to get a little more “simple.” I pray that
whenever those torrents of worry begin to waterfall into my being, I rebuke
them as Jesus did the storm, and pray for God to take the worry, take the
storm, and let His will be done in my life. After all, I know he truly works
all things out for my good (Romans 8:28).
