Looking Ahead to June 23, 2024 -- 5th Sunday After Pentecost, Proper7B

 The Scripture Reading this week is Mark 4:35-5:15

The Sermon title is Storms Settled

Found this on Facebook

 Early Thoughts: What storms have you endured in life? What has helped you weather them? Did the relief come as soon as you hoped it would?

I suggest that storms come in many different forms. Some are wind and rain and hail (like the one that blew through town yesterday afternoon). Many are more metaphorical. I suspect that sometimes those storms feel more threatening, harder to survive. How does one batten down the hatches when the chaos is in your mind or soul?

This wee's reading from Mark shares a a pair of stories. One is a healing story, one is a miracle story. I would say they are both about Jesus as the one with authority to still storms. Whether in a boat on the sea or driving out a demon Jesus is bringing calm and equilibrium to the lives of people around him. Jesus is defeating those things that threaten the well-being of the people in his world.

And I think Jesus is still at it. I think that the God we meet in Jesus is still at work calming storms and bringing calm. [At other times the God we meet in Jesus is at work causing storms and bringing disruption -- sometimes we need both. But either way God is with us in the midst of the storm.] Now the calming may not come as soon as we want. There may be days when the quote in the picture above feels all too real. There may be days when the only way to the calm is to fight our way through the storm. There may even be days when we refuse to allow God to bring the calm because it does not look like what we think we want/need.

Still God is with us in the storms of life. God will, in God's time, lead us to a place of calm and equilibrium. The storm may change us. The calming of the storm may change us. It may amaze us. But that is our word of hope in the middle of the storm that threatens to swamp our boat -- we are not alone, calm will return.

So this week I invite all of us to remember the storms we have endured (or maybe are currently enduring) in life. How have we survived them? What impact have they had on our lives? Where might you have seen God in the midst of the storm?
--Gord