When God's greatness scares us

This is the last of a four part series based on Mark 4:35-41. 

This week's piece is on Mark 4:41:

They were overwhelmed by fear and said to one another, “Who then is this? Even the wind and sea obey him!”

This week, the disciples have just recovered from a near-death experience where Jesus saved them from certain doom (on a trip he sent them on in the first place.) But instead of sympathy, Jesus scolds them for being cowards and tells them their faith is not where it should be. 

That alone should have been enough emotional trouble for them to handle. Yet in that process they have seen something that cannot be explained. If they were scared before, now they must be terrified. They have just seen the supernatural!

We all say we want to see miracles. But what we don't consider is that it is terrifying to encounter something that doesn't have a place in our worldview. We can see this at work in children when they see something completely new and unpredictable. They get quiet quickly. Sometimes they cry. In the Old Testament, Moses asks to see God directly, and God tells him he can't handle it. He's right. We're not wired for that sort of thing.

So the disciples are all "What just happened? Who is this? Even the wind and sea obey him!" The two biggest forces in nature just submitted to Jesus like scared dogs. The disciples witnessed something that was not just unlikely but was even outside of what they could have imagined. It was a lot to handle.

Sometimes we encounter things that make us ask "Who is Jesus?" or "How did that just happen?" We see things we could never have imagined. We have no mental bucket to put them in. It's normal to be afraid.

The worst thing we can do in these kind of situations is quickly move on without absorbing the miracle we just experienced. Time and time again, the disciples are exposed to the power of God, the character of who Jesus is, and to miracle after miracle. But then soon afterwards, sometimes even hours later, they behave as if they have forgotten everything they've seen. "What? Jesus cares about us? What? Jesus can do miracles? Wait, God exists?"

The disciples weren't unusually stupid. They were just human like us. None of us are equipped to handle the clearly abnormal situations our Christian walk sometimes exposes us to. Sometimes it's easier just to go back to what we "knew" before. Even though we've seen Jesus on the cross and we've been told what that means, days later we're back to business as usual. We go back to the life we've rehearsed already, like Peter returning to the fishing boats.

But this is part of the cowardice Jesus challenges us over. If we're supposed to be representatives of his kingdom, does it really suit us to run away when we find ourselves in it? Which world do we prefer? The world that is limited by flesh and blood, or the world of the miraculous?

If we really want to be with Jesus, and we really want to represent his kingdom, we should lean into the times when we've seen something extraordinary. This taste of eternity should be something we don't let ourselves forget easily. We should remind ourselves of it without analyzing it. If God's greatness frightens us, we should let it frighten us towards a closeness with him, not away from it.

Are there any miracles you've forgotten to remember? Think about them now. Are there any situations where you thought you'd never get out of it and now you have? Think about those too. And then think about the God who made them happen, and the eternity he has invited us to join him for, where these kinds of things will be the future norm.