Hope is in the boat

You can listen to Matt read this post in audio format here:

4 minute read

This is our last service to look at the story of Jesus calming the storm, and we’ll spend a little bit of time together reflecting on where we’ve been together. In two weeks’ time we’ll walk through the story of Palm Sunday together, then the following Sunday we’ll celebrate Easter. After that, we’ll enter into the story of Palm 23 through Eastertide. While the stories in scripture will change, our Big Idea will remain the same all the way until Pentecost on June 5:

If you’ve got the time, here are a few opportunities to re-member where we’ve been, as a way to prepare for our next gathering…

1. Read the first blog that started this series…

**“When the boat feels small,”** on February 9th. We looked at how our hope is in a tiny boat in a giant storm, and that’s where Jesus is inviting us.

Read blog

2. Think about on Ash Wednesday…

how we gathered together and remembered that Jesus offers us a hope that is stronger than our fear of death. Most of us anticipate that we’ll die of old age, and one of the most common reasons why an old person cannot live independently is because they can no longer get up off the toilet. Therefore, in order to remind ourselves that we will grow old and frail, we created our ashes in a toilet.

If my heart is a compass, then I want Jesus to be my magnetic north.{1} We then talked about how the Kingdom of God invites us to go in a tiny boat, and into a huge storm, and that’s really hard and scary. That fear can make the magnets in our lives much more attractive. If we follow the magnets that pull us towards a kingdom of our own making, we can create a ‘kingdom’ where we never have to feel powerless, alone, lazy, worthless, vulnerable, or frail.

I love how these were all descriptions of “A Kingdom of my own making” that our community came up with together:

Wow, “A Kingdom of my own making” feels GOOD, until it becomes harmful and destructive. There’s a reason why the analogy of a magnet is so compelling, as it captures the attractiveness of this sort of Kingdom.

Once we got a handle on “A Kingdom of my own making,” we shifted our attention to “the other disciple” who didn’t get in the boat when Jesus gave the orders (Matt 8:21-22). He gave a very good and practical reason why he didn’t get in the boat, and we added other good and practical reasons why disciples don’t get in the boat:

Even though Lent is a season to walk into the broken places in life, we don’t want to lose sight of the hope in the Big Idea. Hope in Jesus changes how we love.