Calming The Storm

A Short Reflection on... The Psalms?

Christ Is Risen!

One of my favorite things about reading the Bible is that after countless times through, unique connections still pop up that amaze me. Last night, laying in bed listening to the Psalms during a lovely thunderstorm, I came across the following passage:

Those who go down to the sea in ships,
Who do business on great waters,
They see the works of the Lord,
And His wonders in the deep.
For He commands and raises the stormy wind,
Which lifts up the waves of the sea.
They mount up to the heavens,
They go down again to the depths;
Their soul melts because of trouble.
They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man,
And are at their wits’ end.
Then they cry out to the Lord in their trouble,
And He brings them out of their distresses.
He calms the storm,
So that its waves are still.
Then they are glad because they are quiet;
So He guides them to their desired haven.
-Psalm 107:23-30 (NKJV, Psalm 108 LXX)

What came to mind was the parallel here and in the Gospels’ account of Jesus calming the sea.

Now when He got into a boat, His disciples followed Him. And suddenly a great tempest arose on the sea, so that the boat was covered with the waves. But He was asleep. Then His disciples came to Him and awoke Him, saying, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!”

But He said to them, “Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?” Then He arose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. So the men marveled, saying, “Who can this be, that even the winds and the sea obey Him?”
-Matthew 8:23-27 (NKJV)

Jesus’ disciples see the tempest and they “cry out to Him”, so to speak. Jesus, being God, calms the sea, just as the Lord does in the Psalms.

No wonder the disciples were in awe. They knew their Bible, and they knew it was the Lord, Yahweh, who calms the seas when men cry out from within it. It’s easier and easier the more I read the Old Testament to see why the disciples marveled when they did. In the Psalms, God calms the storm from on high. In the Gospels, he does it in the boat.

As St. Cyril of Alexandria says:

The exclamation “save us” is commendable, since it shows faith. But to say “we are perishing” brings a charge of littleness of faith against those who were in deep distress. They indeed put their hope in Christ who was sailing with them. They were not totally faithless but were at that point “of little faith,” since in their danger they did not take courage from the fact of Christ’s being with them.
-Fragment 99¹

1. Manlio Simonetti, ed., Matthew 1–13, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 169.