It had been a really long day of healings, exorcisms, easing disease, and such, (not to mention all the preaching) and Jesus must have been plum tuckered out. With his buddies rowing the boat and the bow turned toward Over There, he laid down in the stern, and zonked out. He must have been tireder than a rented mule ‘cause boy oh boy, he was absolutely out of it.



Well, as it turns out, one of those mean little squalls that turns the lake into froth in just a few minutes came along. The wind was blowing like Fury itself and the waves were pitching that boat around like it was inside a butter churn on triple speed. The boys were rowing like their lives depended on it and making no progress at all, unless you count getting blown backwards as progress of some sort.



Every now and then, after yet another huge, vicious wave rocked and twisted the boat so hard it seemed like it would splinter into three or eight or a hundred different pieces, they’d look back at the stern and see Jesus limp as a waterlogged biscuit, just bumping and thumping around… and still sleeping. “Man, how in thunderation can he be sleeping through this!”



Finally, when it looked like that boat was going to get flipped over backwards and send them all straight to Davy Jones’ Locker—or whatever version of it they keep at the bottom of the Sea of Galilee—one of ‘em finally says, “Wake him up!” I reckon it was pretty obvious who the “him” was in this case since everyone else was too terrified to breathe. “Surely, he can do something! If he ain’t gonna cast the demons out of this storm, he can at least help us row!”



Jesus seemed a bit grumpy about having his sleep disturbed. Something about having your cement mixer peace and quiet disturbed by a bunch of screaming fishermen, “Dude! We’re in real trouble here! Don’t you give a whit that we’re all about to drown here?!”



Well, first things first, of course, so right off the bat, he scolded them. “What are you so scared off? Why is your faith so tiny and small and weak?” 



Having set them in their proper place, he then turned and faced the storm. “Knock it off!” he says, and that storm knew better than to mess with a guy who can sleep like a baby when he’s in the back of a boat getting tossed around like when two hounds have both grabbed a hold of the same squirrel. Instantly, the wind remembered it needed to go somewhere else and the water smoothed out like two kids who really didn’t want their momma to stop that car.



Now, folks, I reckon maybe Jesus meant they had to know that boat wasn’t about to go down that night. “You know who I am, right? I kick demons out of people, heal lepers, make the deaf hear, the lame walk, and raise the dead. You think any boat I’m in is really gonna sink?!”



No matter how rough things get in life, our boat is not going down. Not if we’re in Jesus’ boat. We might get wet, but we are not going to drown.



It ain’t believing what you can do so much as it is remembering who you’re with.