Power–Total and Awesome

We must try not to let our familiarity with this passage dull our appreciation of its significance. First, consider what it meant to the small band of disciples that accompanied Jesus out onto the lake. They had seen and heard enough to recognize Jesus’ unique authority, and commit to following him. When he said, “Let us go” (35), that is exactly what they did, but in so doing they were about to discover that they really had no idea who Jesus really was. Several of them, experienced Galilean fishermen, knew when to fear a storm’s capacity to sink boats and drown sailors, but on this occasion they were to experience another terror of an entirely different order (41). When Jesus commanded the wind and sea to be still, they obeyed instantly. In their fearful incomprehension, the disciples knew they had witnessed something only God could do. When the God of Israel, the Lord of history and nature, chooses to reveal himself, nature must submit to him. The new fear now being experienced by the incredulous disciples was the “numinous awe toward the ‘wholly other’ … the fear of God’s presence, of God coming and acting in the realm in which we actually live” (M. Minor).

Second, acknowledgment of Jesus as “the Lord of history and nature” has profound implications for how we live and behave within God’s creation. This has always been so, but in the context of the global ecological situation now confronting us, it is even more important to recognize that God requires from each of us “a responsible stewardship [and] not a destructive domination” (John Stott). We are made to care for the earth and share its resources justly and compassionately. Our worship of its Creator is compromised when we fail to do so.

God is the creator of the earth and has entrusted us with its care. We are its stewards. In what ways can you be a better steward of God’s creation?