Morning Meditation

October 10, 2026

Reading: Luke 8:22-25

One day he got into a boat with his disciples, and he said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side of the lake.’ So they put out, and while they were sailing he fell asleep. A gale swept down on the lake, and the boat was filling with water, and they were in danger. They went to him and woke him up, shouting, ‘Master, Master, we are perishing!’ And he woke up and rebuked the wind and the raging waves; they ceased, and there was a calm. He said to them, ‘Where is your faith?’ They were afraid and amazed, and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that he commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?’

Meditation-Rebecca Northington

A couple of days ago I heard an old clip of a Julia Roberts interview with Stephen Colbert. In the interview Colbert asks her what she does to relax, and she says she plays Mahjong once a week with girlfriends. She explains, “the concept of it is to create order out of chaos based on a random drawing of tiles.” I have recently learned the game myself and must agree that the activity of sitting quietly, shuffling 13 tiles around for 30 minutes to an hour, and potentially developing up to 1,000 different hands, is both exciting and calming: creating order out of chaos.

Our Christian story starts with Genesis and a God who makes order out of chaos in 6 days. Humans have always strived to be God-like in our ability to control situations and dynamics that are often above our job description. The Old Testament gives us repeated stories of our attempts to be like God, starting in the garden, Genesis 3, when the serpent tempts us:

“Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

This great temptation to be like God has driven most of our human troubles chronicled by the Bible since Genesis. From the tower of Babel to the chief priests in Christ’s time, humans have attempted to make decisions on God's behalf and to speak for God. It happens today as different groups co-opt the name of Christ for their own agendas, and it typically does not end well.

Those same people panic when the storm comes - literally and figuratively. Part of the problem with trying to be God-like is a total misunderstanding of who God is, for and with us. This arrogance represents a lack of faith, or maybe even a lack of honesty - with ourselves and with God. Faith asks us to give up control. Period. For many of us, that may be the greatest hurdle to a life of faith. When the disciples wake Jesus and he calms the storm, he rebukes them. He has been with them day after day, year after year, and yet still they do not recognize what and who he is.

Mahjong is fun. Pretending to have the wisdom to create order out of chaos is exciting. But when the real storms of life come we must remember that God is with us, God will protect us, and that there are some things we cannot control - as much as we would like to. Critical to this understanding is the freedom that comes with the ultimate surrender to God’s love.