How could Jesus not be concerned when the boat He was on began to sink in a storm? Why would there be a message in it for us?

You might think that He’d have been alright no matter what, because God would make sure He didn’t die before His time. But then, how would we apply the moral of the story to our own lives - as Christians we’re not being preserved for crucifixion; the cross has already happened anyway, and there are plenty of threats to life and limb we’d be foolish not to take seriously.

The short answer is that He’d already told them to sail to the other side of the lake; if He’d said they were going there, then they were going there, arrival on the far shore was guaranteed no matter what happened on the way. It was a question of trusting in Him and His word, absolutely. That’s a strong lesson for anyone.

But there’s perhaps a bigger answer.

Jesus’ mission was to announce that the Kingdom of God was at hand. He spoke about the Kingdom, demo’d the realities of the Kingdom, applied the yardstick of it against religious people. But most of all He proclaimed that it was coming from Heaven to earth, that it was about to enter people and by doing so take them into it while they were still alive. In effect, He offered for them to drop their citizenship here and be transformed into citizens from there. And people there aren’t afraid. They also have unearthly power. And know the backing of their God.

Once He’d died, all those who humbled themselves and yielded to the offer of being saved, received His Spirit and began to live by its ways. It wasn’t a new form of disciplining oneself to be good; it was a translation out of being of a fallen humanity, into being of one that wasn’t.

Jesus lived from the economy of that heavenly Kingdom. Nothing that this world did to Him was able to rob Him of that viewpoint. As Someone not of this place, He accepted His village and family turning on Him – rejection held no fear; He welcomed lepers and put His bare hands on them to heal them – disease had no threat; He looked at demonized people and told the demons to leave – devils meant nothing; He ordered dead people to live again – death had no stopping power; He turned the tables over in the Temple in front of officials and those who wanted to put an end to Him – people didn’t intimidate Him; He calmly walked to Jerusalem to be killed, and when He could have said something to save Himself, He kept His mouth shut. He lived as Someone from another place with other powers and another agenda. The reality of Heaven, and its viewpoint of the whole thing, was ever with Him.

We are told we aren’t to mourn as others do, since death doesn’t mean much now, that we can afford to give away all we’ve got and still be taken care of. We should expect to talk to God directly and hear Him talk back. In fact, we’ve been ordered to go and do as Jesus did, and to do even greater things, because His Spirit’s been sent into us for the spreading of the Kingdom. When we’re of Heaven instead of earth, that’s only natural.

Our main response for all He did to get us there, is to go ahead and live the thing out.

So the message in today’s picture is to go ahead and see things by your new mindset, to be sure and give way to it if you’ve had His Spirit installed within you - make that effort, the only one needed. There is peace and power to be had, no matter what storms rage in the world you no longer are of. And nothing on this earth will be able to stop you from getting where you’re now going.