“In our Gospel reading today we hear about Jesus calming the storm and this happened on the Sea of Galilee where storms quickly come up just as they do in our lives sometimes. We have to wonder how Jesus could have been sleeping during that violent storm. Better yet, we wonder why he was sleeping? Jesus knew from all eternity that that storm would come up and maybe it was to teach his disciples that they need to rely on him in order to rely on the storms of their life, but with Jesus they were always safe. Intellectually the disciples knew that Jesus had the power to save them otherwise they wouldn’t have woken him from his sleep with their plea for help. Perhaps their delay in waking him was that originally they didn’t think they needed Jesus until they became desperate and realized they were no match for this storm. The boat in this story is a symbol for the Church. When the clergy and the laity behave like a human institution and don’t rely on Jesus it’s as if we leave Jesus sleeping and bad things happen, but when the Church turns to Jesus in her desperation the storms attacking the Church are calmed and just as Jesus promised. For 2000 years Jesus has been saving his Church. The boat also represents our soul. Jesus is always in our soul. When we try to deal with life on our own without Jesus it’s as if Jesus is asleep. Now Jesus is not asleep, but the effect is the same. Inevitably, storms of hardship and temptation arise and sometimes without any notice and you know them. You experience them: job losses, illness, family dynamics that aren’t healthy, anxieties and fears, sin and shame, and each of these is like waves crashing into our soul and each of them is a test and when we try to go alone and we don’t rely on Jesus things don’t go well, but when we wake up Jesus by relying on Him we can weather the storm. Sometimes we don’t weather the storm in the way that we anticipated or maybe we even hoped for, but when we rely on Jesus we always progress spiritually when we go through those trials. These truths are hard to remember when things are going well in our lives and we’re tempted to believe that we don’t need Jesus. These truths are hard to believe when we’re in the middle of the storm and we are tempted to think that relying on God won’t help us, so if in the bad times and the good times it’s hard to really live this out to really trust in God that must mean for the bulk of our life it’s tough to really trust in God’s providence and it is. There are some things that we can do. One thing that we can do is to pray in gratitude for the blessings that we have and we can pray for those people who’s storms are more intense than our storms and we can reflect on the Saints who endured incredible storms. We can remember how God has gotten us through previous storms. We can pray for strength for our future storms that will inevitably happen. We can remember that our life here is not our final destination and all of these things we should do regularly. In fact, it would be better if we did them daily. Even with these practices trusting completely in God’s providence is not a cakewalk and so sometimes all we can do is just pray, ‘O Lord I believe. Please help my unbelief.’”