Daily Devotional

Here is something easy to miss: Jesus does not calm the storm first. The wind is still howling and the waves are still crashing when he turns to the disciples and asks them a question. He deals with them before he deals with the weather. That is how much he is in control. The storm can wait. And very often this is how he works in our lives as well. Before he changes our circumstances, he addresses our hearts.

“Why are you afraid?” At first the question sounds almost absurd. Have you seen the waves, Lord? But Jesus is not gathering information; he is provoking reflection. These men had watched him cleanse a leper with a touch, heal a servant from a distance with a word, and heal a whole town in one evening. They had just called him “Lord.” Why would wind and water be too much for him?

The phrase “little faith” translates a single word, oligopistoi, which is a characteristic Matthean term. It is almost a nickname for the disciples: “little-faiths.” The last time Jesus used it was in the Sermon on the Mount, about the Father who feeds the birds and clothes the grass. That is the background here. If the Father will feed you and clothe you, will he not keep you in a boat with his Son? Little faith is not no faith; a faithless man would not cry “Lord, save.” But little faith is faith that forgets. It looks at the waves longer than it looks at the one in the boat.

This does not mean every fear is sin. Some fear is healthy and appropriate; the doctor’s pause over an X-ray should stir something in us. The problem is not feeling fear but fear taking over until we forget who is with us. And here is the good news: their faith was little, but it was enough to wake him. It is not the size of your faith that saves you. It is the size of the one in whom your faith rests.