Monday, 18 June 2012

• Jesus Hit Me: Facing the Storms of Life

  By Tom Zuniga
  
  I’M AT CAMP. And finally, I’ve got a chance to report what’s been going on these last couple weeks. Excited to share my experience with y’all this summer!

  During camp training, it was engrained within all the counselors that we, under no circumstances, were to ever hit a child.

  They said nothing about Jesus hitting us though.

  “Staff Week” at camp was the most difficult thing I’ve undertaken in 25 years. This “week” of training was actually 12 days in length, making it all the more grueling on me.

  When the summer ends, I may elaborate further on why exactly training week was so personally treacherous. Needless to say, I found myself constantly doubting God’s ability to carry me, admitting defeat at nearly every turn. Utterly fearful of the training and the summer that lay before me.

  I verbally said to myself, to God, and to the quiet void of my secluded parked car that God simply could not handle this one. This one was beyond Him.

  Yeah, I was pretty blunt.

  I imagine the disciples felt similarly as I recently read the famous storm story of Mark 4. Pelting rain, jagged lightning, hurricane-force winds, mammoth waves — it was the end of the world. Jesus was sleeping through the whole ordeal, and when the disciples awoke Him, He simply uttered three words.

  The storm ceased.

  End of the world suddenly looked like the silliest assessment of the disciples’ situation. And then Jesus brutally hit His disciples in Mark 4:40, just like He hit me:

  But He said to them, “Why are you so fearful? How is it that you have no faith?”
  

  Consider the disciples’ guts sucker-punched.

  My summer “storm” was immediately calmed when the first two boys entered my cabin this week. I saw them unloading their stuff, my heart lit with joy, and I felt the lightning and wind and waves simply cease.

  I later felt Jesus looking me square in the eyes and bluntly asking:

  Why are you so afraid? Don’t you have any faith at all?

  I’m sorry, God. I hate that I live up to my doubting namesake far too often. Forgive me. Help me this summer. Help me in this life. Help me believe the impossible. That truly nothing is beyond Your power.

  Jesus, continue calming my storms and preparing this life for even more impossibles to come.

  Bring on the summer.

   

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