A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But Jesus was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and the disciples woke him up and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?"
--Mark 4:37-38

I cannot urge you enough to head over to Nadio Bolz-Weber's blog and read her "Sermon on Fear, Self-centeredness, and the Storm at Sea." Seriously. Go do it.

Need a little incentive? Here's an excerpt:

[One] of the issues in our Gospel text today about the storm at sea [is that the] disciples assume Jesus doesn’t care that they are in peril.

But maybe that’s where feelings can get us into trouble. I feel close to God therefore God must be close. I feel abandoned therefore God must be far off.

I’m more and more convinced, not that how we feel is unimportant, but that how we feel is not the gauge of reality we’ve been told it is. A lot of time when I meet people for pastoral care and they are in the middle of a storm I end up saying to them “I think you’re actually doing better than you feel."

See, when our faith in God is directly correlated to how we feel about our life maybe it’s a bit askew. Because we can so easily think God is indifferent because God isn’t doing what we think God should do if God really loved us and we totally miss the fact that at least God’s in the dang boat with us! Jesus never left them, he just didn’t act the way they thought he should. And that made them feel bad.

God caring about us doesn’t always end up looking like God doing for us what we think God should. Because sometime the faithfulness of God actually looks like the fact that there is a better story than the way you want things to work out.

See what I mean? Good stuff. Hopefully you'll head over now and read the whole thing. Enjoy!