I do a fair amount of both international and domestic traveling, so I’m somewhat familiar with planes flying through turbulence. Add to this fact that my hometown, Denver, is notorious for choppy weather and bumpy landings. Consequently, I’m somewhat adept at coaching my thoughts when an airplane has a sudden altitude drop or lots of swaying and rolling. This can be concerning when my plane is making the approach for landing, like a recent flight into Chicago on a small puddle-jumper plane. Needless to say, we landed with no crashing or injuries.
I’m clear that turbulence can be challenging to navigate, and this reminds me of Jesus’s disciples who were in a boat with Him during a storm. When we think about the boat and stormy weather thing in the Gospels, we’d be wise to consider that this wasn’t a one-off experience for Jesus’s disciples. Recall that Peter walked on the water to Him in the middle of a big storm, and there was at least one occasion when their boat was being swamped with waves from a storm while Jesus slept (Matthew 8:23-27).
Storms and turbulence are nothing new for the human existence. These kinds of unsettling experiences can happen when we go through the loss of a job, economic downturn and inflation, social media tensions, health crises, relationship struggles, political election seasons and lots more. I’m sure that you can think of a few stormy and turbulent times in your life.
So what are some techniques we can employ for life’s turbulent experiences? For starters, let’s think about two occasions in the Gospels where Jesus helped His disciples in the midst of a storm on the Sea of Galilee. On one occasion, Jesus was sleeping in the boat during a really bad storm. It was so bad that the disciples said to Him, “Teacher, don’t You care that we are perishing?” (Mark 4:38)
When I think about these words, it’s clear to me that the turbulence the disciples experienced was both internal and external. It’s important for us to think about this so we don’t allow our internal peace and trust in Jesus to get hijacked by external circumstances and situations. No matter what we go through externally, we need to let Jesus be our stable core, Captain of our soul, Prince of peace and grounding presence. Jesus is better than a weighted blanket!
Additionally, when Jesus walked on the water during the night in the midst of a storm, this was highly disturbing to His disciples in the boat. Not only were they navigating a stormy night, but they also freaked out when they saw Him walking on the water, supposing He was a ghost. In the turbulence that we go through in life, it’s possible that we can experience Jesus being supernatural and unexpected. Let’s be like Peter and have faith and trust in Jesus to walk with Him in supernatural ways.
Let’s also appreciate that Jesus can calm any storm happening around us, and we can choose to let Him stabilize our interior, no matter the exterior turbulence!
