Love Besieged
“And they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” (Mark 4:38)
Dark was the night and long was the hour in which they strove. The winds and waves battered, bruised, and altogether threatened to hurl the disciples into a watery abyss. As the waves climbed higher, their spirts sank lower. The flashes of lightning highlighted their despair before plunging them back into the outer darkness from which they saw no hope. However, neither the thunderbolts hurled from heaven nor the waves clamoring from below were not their greatest enemy. It was unbelief. Can you not hear the hissing of that forked tongue in their question? “Do you not care that we are perishing?”
With infinite power, God can cast mountains into the heart of the sea; with infinite knowledge, God can know the beginning from the end in the most minute of details; with infinite wisdom, God can call all of the stars out by name and not forget one of them. But what does that matter if God does not care about me? Our prayers may reach as far as divine omnipotence, but they mean nothing if divine love will not reach me. Therefore, Satan fights against God’s love for us with all the artillery of which hell itself can muster. With Eve and with Job, Satan targeted the goodness of God. After seeing the Red Sea parted, after eating bread from heaven, after tasting and seeing God’s goodness in a vast and weary land, Israel denies the goodness of God. Unbelief, unbelief – this is nothing but unbelief! We see the suffering with our eyes and doubt the goodness of God in our hearts.
Therefore, hear Jesus’ rebuke: “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” It is as if Jesus says, “I have been with you all this time. Do you still not believe that I care for you? Do you still not understand that you are the apple of My eye, My prized possession, My joy and My crown?” Believer, His care for you is greater than the changing winds of the times, than the battering waves of sickness and death. His care for you is as high as the heavens, for there He is interceding for you. The love of Christ directs His ear toward your cries; the love of Christ girds His arm toward your weakness; the love of Christ shields you from the sword and spear of the enemy; the love of Christ moves and directs all things in heaven and on earth to the end of your salvation. However dark the night and long the hour, keep your eyes on the love of Christ.
