AP

Mark 4: 39-40  [Jesus] got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet!  Be still!”  Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.  He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid?  Do you still have no faith?”

The recent floods in NSW have caused such widespread, discouraging devastation that many people question whether or not a loving God could have any control at all over the weather.  Advances in our scientific knowledge, coupled with our culture moving further and further away from, and becoming quite sceptical of, belief in a Sovereign, Creator God, leads us inevitably to the conclusion that ‘climate change’ is ALL Man’s fault, and looks for SOMEONE to blame – the easiest target being the government.

Of course, the secular media make every effort to normalise this worldview, so the majority census opinion is that there is NO loving, redeeming, Sovereign Creator God.  God’s own revelation in his infallible Word, the Bible, however, presents us with a quite different worldview.  From the Creation account (Genesis 1-2), through Noah’s flood (Genesis 6-9), the parting of the Red Sea (Exodus 14), the routing of Sisera by Barak (Judges 4-5), and countless other OT references, we are left in no doubt that the God of Creation, the Author of the Bible, and the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, DOES control the weather in every minute detail.

In fact, one of the many ways in which Jesus demonstrated that he WAS/IS God was his calming of the storm with his voice (cf verse 41, cf Psalm 107:29).  We can struggle with his Providence (as we do when we experience floods, droughts, and other catastrophic ‘natural’ phenomena), often having to humble ourselves, as Paul did, before the inscrutability of his Judgements (Romans 9:19-20; 11:33-36), BUT WE MUST NOT deny his own claim that it is HE who causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous (Matthew 5:45).  The upside of all this, of course, is that we can therefore trust him with every part of our lives – which is exactly what he wants us to do (verse 40)!  When a ‘cyclone’ hits your life unexpectedly, do you look to Jesus and trust him to bring you through it?  Do you hear clearly his authoritative ‘QUIET! BE STILL!’?

– Bruce Christian