Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“He said to them, ‘Where is your faith?’ They were afraid and amazed, and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that he commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?’”
NL Daily Devotion for Tuesday, February 11, 2025
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
Maybe Jesus was irritated at having been woken up. I know I’m not at my best when I’m tired. (Who am I kidding—I’m a mess when I’m tired. I would rather have physical pain than feel tired.) He has no sympathy that his friends were just in fear for their lives, but gets up, tells the storm to “Calm down, already,” and scolds his friends for not having faith. Faith in what? That God wouldn’t let them drown?
The world is full of Christians who will tell you directly or indirectly that if you’re experiencing challenges or even horrific tragedies that it’s something you’re doing wrong. I know someone who had to stop going to her church because of the incessant messages (overt and otherwise) that her daughter’s severe mental illness needed to be “prayed over” and the fact that praying for and about her wasn’t helping at all somehow meant mom was doing something terribly wrong. Frankly, this is abhorrent to me.
A friend and I were discussing the temptations of Jesus, and how the last one (in Luke, anyway) where the devil tells him to throw himself off the pinnacle and God will protect him, is really a temptation to try to control God by holding some illusion that we’re somehow exempt from suffering because of our faith. (Lk 4:9-12)
So often in scripture, Jesus tells people “your faith has made you well” or that if they had faith they could move mountains or relocate trees. Revisit my devotion from yesterday and be reminded that we don’t always understand what Jesus is saying. That certainty—especially the certainty that if we’re “good enough” God will keep us from experiencing pain—is the opposite of faith.
I believe Jesus loves people in their pain and fear, experiences it with them, holds them through it, and sustains them. He doesn’t scold them for a lack of faith. Like I said, maybe he was just mad he got woken up. I’m not certain. I just have to have faith.
How do I show up without judgment for people who are struggling?
