Who’s Being Unreasonable?

My kids think I am unreasonable at times, well, maybe a lot of times. High expectations, unreasonable demands and just plain grumpy. Since they are unemployed, too young to drive and because we don’t live in West Virginia, they aren’t old enough to get married, they’re stuck with me. But as I was reading through the Bible this morning, I realized that I’m a creampuff compared to Jesus. He wasn’t always carrying a baby lamb and telling the little kids to come to him. Sometimes He was harder to get along with than I’ve ever thought of being.

In Matthew 8:23-27, a “great storm” arose on the sea and the waves almost “swamped” the boat.

Swamped doesn’t sound good in Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic or King James English, but through it all Jesus was sleeping.

 (What I imagine Jesus would have had playing on His Ipod at the time. Click the play button, Keely)

 I guess a great peace of mind and deep sleep comes with knowing that you can tell the storm to shut up. And Jesus seemed to be annoyed that His nervous disciples didn’t realize this and interrupted his nap. “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?”  Now doesn’t that seem unreasonable? The boat is going down, they are all about to die and Jesus wants to know why they are whining. Shouldn’t impending death cause a healthy dose of fear?

But to Jesus’ credit, by this time, the disciples had seen a few things. Jesus had cured a leper; did a long distance healing of a soldier’s paralyzed servant and restored good health to Peter’s mother-in-law with a touch of his hand (do you think He asked Peter about that first?). I guess He expected the disciples to have mustered up some faith by that point. Makes sense. Tom Brady’s and Peyton Manning’s teammates and fans have faith in them to pull out game winning heroics in the last 58 seconds, why? Because they’ve seen these guys do it time and time again. Having power over paralysis is a far greater feat, so where was the disciples’ faith?

Well, not so hard on the guys. I’ll just speak for me now. Your own shortcomings can convict you. I’ve seen Jesus save my daughter from death; heal my son’s cleft palate; respond directly and quickly to my specific prayers and yet I worry about next week’s bills…every week.

Who’s being unreasonable?