The divine answer is always more terrifying than our human instincts

There's a story in the bible in the book of Mark. The disciples are in a boat with Jesus when a furious storm breaks out, waves roll over the boat, nearly swamping it.

In the midst of the storm, Jesus was nowhere to be found.

The disciples eventually find Jesus asleep on a cushion in the stern of the boat. The disciples wake him and ask, "teacher, do you not care that we're all about to drown?"

Jesus got up. Stretched. Took a look around and then said, "Quiet! Be still!" The storm immediately subsided; the seas became perfectly calm.

Jesus said to the disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”

The disciples were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”

The bible tells us the disciples were afraid of the storm, but they were even more terrified of the answer to the storm.

Yesterday, I had a bit of a meltdown. It's been a long week of travel, I'm fighting an illness, there have been some challenging relational struggles the past week, and then yesterday, the crowning blow, the online narratives about the election results, of which there was no shortage.

Those are not meltdown excuses, but for my own wellness I've gotten better at trying to understand my meltdowns.

The triggering event was definitely the election narratives that directly or indirectly spoke to the idea that God had sent a human to take back our country and to restore hope in individuals struggling to find it.

I am always leery of folks who seem to know which events and which people God is and is not using to fulfill his story of salvation and hope; I'm leery of people who can see God fulfilling his story in circumstances they agree with, but somehow spend their time looking for God to reappear, to take reclaim goodness from circumstances they don't agree with.

The disciples woke Jesus in the storm looking for a human answer. Can you do something with this boat to protect us from the storm, they begged? But Jesus woke up and gave them a Godly answer.

Jesus skipped boat repair and went right to the storm.

The disciples were merely afraid of the human answer. The Godly answer on the other hand, the one that proved to be THE answer - well that answer terrified them.

As I processed my meltdown yesterday, as I re-read my words, I recognized my own hypocrisy. Which, by the way, I am never afraid to find my own hypocrisies; they often point me in directions pretending I'm not a hypocrite would never take me.

It is true. I don't find God in one political party more than the other. I can't begin to reduce God to that. The minute I put God in a box, God is suddenly not much bigger than me. And that's a scary notion for any God followers.

I truly believe one of the great surprises of humans who enter heaven will be discovering just how little attention God pays to CNN and Fox. Just how little God understands our electoral college. I think we will be shocked to find how much time God has spent campaigning for us to lovingly elect our neighbors while we've been obsessed with electing the right presidents.

Yet, there are many areas in my life outside of politics where I look for human answers to solve divine problems. There are many areas in my life where I feel much more comfortable waking Jesus up and asking him, are you not going to do something about this, yet remain terrified of the power and control he wants me to yield to him in my storms.

Yesterday, in the midst of my meltdown, my human instinct was to abandon a very human social media platform. In my mind, the human commotion emerging from that platform was making a mockery of the divine God who has done miraculously divine things in my life.

But then, as I had friends respond, many of whom I have never met in real life, reminding me that the words I have spoken into their lives have had meaning, words that are never mine but words God has always willingly and divinely put on my heart, I heard God clearly ask me, who is doing the mocking now?

I heard God ask, who is feeling compelled to lean on their own human responses to a divine challenge, now? Who is fearfully trying to wake Jesus up for assistance with the boat, yet terrified of fully trusting what the wide awake Jesus wants to do with and through your own storms.

Who is trying to divert the divine path already put before them in favor of a human path that feels less terrifying. Because that is what makes the divine path so terrifying some days, it doesn't feel as simple to embrace as the human path.

I had a friend whom, as I was writing this, unexpectedly reached out with a message that said:

"I don't just read your words and move on to the next thing. I suspect I'm not alone. I take them to heart. I look for how I can apply them, and you have made a real difference in my life. The way I see and feel things."

Those words were from a dear friend whom I have never met.

But more, they were from a wide awake Jesus, rising from his sleep, walking right past me and my fears and my meltdowns, walking right into the storm of my life and saying, "Quite. Be Still."

Jesus is not interested in fixing the boats in our lives. Jesus is focused on calming the storms. Rarely, if ever, do our human systems and human responses have the power to calm the storms; they are almost always focused on the boats.

I'm not suggesting we don't have a need for boat fixers. We sure do need them. But when we go all in on boat fixers and run terrified from the calmer of the storms, we are always more at risk of a meltdown.

We are always more at risk of drowning.