There’s no sleep like a child's sleep. No matter how much noise swirls around them or how much jostling they experience, once an infant has settled to slumber, they’re out. I’ve gathered my sleeping toddlers from car seats and couches, carried them past blaring TVs and harsh overhead light, or through darkened rooms with obstacle courses of scattered toys — bumping walls and furniture — and settled them into cribs and beds with no hint of stirring.
This is the type of slumber I imagine Jesus reached in Mark 4:35-41. After a long day of preaching, standing in a boat in which he surely had to make those little balance-maintaining movements that invisibly sap our energy, he and the disciples set sail across the Sea of Galilee at evening. Verse 36 notes that they took him “just as he was”—tired, sweaty, dirty, and sore. Naturally, he “sleeps like a baby.”
Teaching from this passage often focuses on Jesus’ miraculous calming of the storm. Several disciples were fishermen, men of the sea who would have had experience with storms yet feared for their lives at this maelstrom’s particular ferocity. And Jesus brings this great (Greek ‘Megas’) storm to great calm with a word, stirring great fear among the disciples.
But I’m stirred to nearly as much wonder at the fact that amid this tempest, rising and falling on the pitching water, being soaked by the waves filling the boat, Jesus remains asleep. Even when I’m at my most exhausted, if you were to rock my bed back and forth or toss buckets of water on me, I’d be up in a second.
How did Jesus rest through it all? I think his rebuke in verse 40 offers a hint: “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?”
My kids are able to rest in serenity as I carry them through life’s chaos because they innately trust me. Even if it’s not fully true, they see their mother and myself in control. We’re grown up, we absorb the world’s difficulties, we provide what they need, and they, ignorant of how great the storms around them are, are free to fall fully to rest. They’re secure behind our seemingly impenetrable protection.
Jesus’ trust in his Father — who, unlike myself, is truly in control, and whose protection is truly impenetrable — is total and perfect. And this is the same trust we are invited to embrace. No matter how ferocious our particular storms may be, we can capitulate to contented rest under our Father’s unfailing care.
This, I think, is what Jesus meant when he spoke about receiving the Kingdom of God “like a child” (Mark 10:15). An abundance of trust, giving life our full energy and allowing him to worry about the things beyond our capability, knowing he is fully able.
But, my, how difficult the daily struggle is to reach that release and rest!
Heavenly Father, I’m so grateful that you are both able to calm the harshest storm and carry me through those storms you choose to let rage. Deepen my daily trust in your goodness, your love for me as a child in Christ, and your protection and grace, no matter how great the storms are. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Throughout This Day: Reflect on the following questions, or perhaps even discuss them with a friend:
- What storms are raging around you today? In what ways are you trying to calm or control them yourself, and in what ways might you, like the disciples, be asking “do you not care…?”
- What might releasing yourself into God’s care and resting amid this particular storm look like?
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