Vol
13 No 5
March 25, 2014
Dear Friend,
One day Jesus taught until evening and then
stepped into the boat with his disciples, saying, "Let’s go to the other
side (of the Sea of Galilee)." He was exhausted and promptly fell
asleep.
A terrible storm came upon them and as Mark
described it, "The waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already
being swamped." They woke Jesus up saying, "Don’t you care that we
are dying?" Jesus rebuked the wind and the wind ended.
If that was the whole story, people could contend
it teaches that Jesus is Lord of all creation, but then others would argue it
could have been pure coincidence that the wind died down just as Jesus rebuked
it.
It’s the next phrase that changes everything.
Jesus said to the sea, “Peace! Be still and there was dead calm!”
To understand the significance of this you have
to know a little physics. There is tremendous energy that is stored in giant
waves as they roll and roil. When the wind dies down, the energy in the waves
keeps the waves thrashing around for a long time.
For crashing waves to become immediately a “dead
calm” is totally unnatural. It happened because Jesus spoke with power of the
actual infinite, almighty creator God of the universe.
It was a real miracle and they knew
it. “And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, ‘Who then is
this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?’” Mark 4:41
“I sing the mighty pow’r of God.” Join me!
With joy –
E. Stanley Ott
