Saturday, January 28, 2017

"Quiet! Be Still!"

Hello! and happy good weekend to all of us, GUYS.  Our "daily bread" this Saturday:

THE GOOD NEWS (28 January 2017)
"On that same day when evening had come, JESUS said to them, 'Let's go across to the other side.'  So they left the crowd and took HIM away in the boat HE had been sitting in, and other boats set out with HIM.  Then a storm gathered and it began to blow a gale.  The waves spilled over into the boat so that it was soon filled with water.  And JESUS was in the stern, asleep on the cushion.
They woke HIM up and said, 'Master, don't you care if we sink?  As JESUS awoke, HE rebuked the wind and ordered the sea, 'Quiet now! Be still!'  The wind dropped and there was a great calm.  Then JESUS said to them, 'Why are you so frightened?  Do you still have no faith?'
But they were terrified and they said to one another, 'Who can this be?  Even the wind and the sea obey HIM!'" - Mark 4:35-41 
(In Jewish mentality the sea is a daily reminder of primitive chaos, it is there the marine monsters move around, monsters which only GOD, for HE is the all-powerful, can challenge: Leviathan and Rahab.  In commanding the sea: Quiet now!  Be still!  Just as HE does with the demons [Mark 1:25] JESUS affirms HIS divine power over the forces of evil.

Confronted with all the forms of evil that attack them, in the midst of tempests that arise, people, at times, wonder if GOD "does not sleep."  JESUS is there.  HE is not surprised by the disciples' fear of the tempest, but of their lack of faith; only trust in the victory of JESUS, Son of GOD, over the forces of evil, will allow them to overcome this fear.

At the very instant when they discover this divine power in JESUS, the apostles are terrified, as was Moses at the burning bush [Exodus 3:1], and Isaiah at the time of his vision in the Temple [Isaiah 6:5], as all those to whom GOD shows HIMSELF in a special way: more than a friend, more than a master, JESUS revealed HIMSELF to them in the truth of HIS being.  This fear in discovering GOD so close to them was greater than the fear they had felt during the tempest a few moments earlier.") 

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