Another time, Jesus was in the Sea of Galilee, at the bottom of a boat, and a storm arose quickly. He was asleep, and He didn’t wake up.
Meanwhile, His disciples were panicked (a common theme).
(What follows is a short story about turning lemons into lemonade.)
The waves were coming up over the sides of the boat, covering it up, and still Jesus continued to sleep.
Imagine the solutions frantically shouted just steps from where He lay: PowerPoints were shown about how to decrease the water’s power, how to pump out the boat faster; charts were shown on just how many gallons one man can bail per hour—can you see it?
The boat must have been seizing one side to the other, and sure, Jesus must have been tired from the day, but this sleep was supernatural sleep, proving-a-point sleep.
One does not simply sleep in a fishing boat ready to capsize, filled with wailing, panicked, full-grown, life-long seafaring men.
Jesus did.
I can tell you who would have been wide awake: me.
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, right?
What about when life gives you a dadgum capsizing boat? What do you do with that?
The disciples finally ran out of bailing strength and PowerPoints and, at their wits’ end, ran to Jesus and woke Him up, “Don’t you care about us? Why would you let bad things overcome us and kill us?”, they said.
Jesus’ response is shocking: “Why are you such cowards, men of little faith?”
Maybe it’s just me, but a rebuke seems ill-timed.
On the verge of death, Jesus doesn’t coddle, empathize, or even sympathize, He does something much more valuable. He shakes their brain a little bit in order to redirect their attention.
He rebukes them, not because they were afraid, but because they let their fear turn them into frantic blobs of chaos and forget who was in the boat with them.
Jesus just recently got done working miracles no magician has ever done, and here they are worried He was going to drown with them in a boat in a storm in the Sea of Galilee.
They were so focused on themselves and their solutions that they forgot that the odds are really slim that the Son of God was going to drown with them.
They took their eyes off Him and put them on themselves (and need I say, their PowerPoints).
How often do we do the same, taking our eyes off the bigger picture, the True reality behind the lives we live, and succumb to the panic of the moment?
Life gave them lemons and, as we often do, they failed the test.
They looked to themselves for the solution, found none, and fell into chaos. Jesus wants so much more for them.
So what does Jesus do?
He stands up and rebukes again, this time rebuking the winds and the sea—He is on a rebuking spree!—and the winds and the sea together go completely calm as an obedient unit.
The disciples marvel and say, “What kind of a man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey Him?”
What kind indeed.
Later on, the disciples are in another boat on the same sea, and they see someone walking on the water toward them. They thought it was a ghost and got really afraid, again!
One does not simply walk on top of the Sea of Galilee
But it wasn’t a ghost.
One does not simply make lemonade out of lemons, but there are things at play in the universe that far surpass what we can see, measure, plan, or account for.
Which is why, when life gives you lemons, don’t just make lemonade; give them to Jesus and let Him feed 100,000 people lemonade.