Acts 27:21-44
A friend of mine recently moved from a western state to an eastern state with his young family, along with a son who has severe ongoing health needs. The decision to move had been a painful one, as their efforts to plant a church had been unsuccessful. So now they planned to join a ministry to help people understand and follow Jesus. After driving for two days straight, they had a fun destination in mind for their young boys. But then they ran into trouble. An hour from their first destination, their car broke down. The cost of the repairs was $800 dollars, but that was all they had budgeted for some family fun. They settled for a hotel that at least had a swimming pool, promising their boys they’d take him swimming there. But when they got there, but pool was closed for maintenance. On top of all this, just as they were putting their boys to bed, the one with the severe medical needs broke some essential medical equipment. When I read this update, I must admit the thought crossed my mind: “Why does that happen to them? They’re just trying to serve Jesus!” There are two things that would have made this situation less troubling: The trouble might have made more sense if he was running away from God—moving across the country to rob a bank there. But he was going to serve God! The issue might be someone less complicated if he didn’t believe in God at all. “This is infuriating. I hate it. But it’s bad luck. Life played me a bad hand.” But as a Christian, he believes in a God who has a purpose for his people and who has providential control over every circumstance. Why would God put a storm in the path of obedience? We could wonder the same thing about the Apostle Paul as well. He’s going to tell people the good news that Jesus is the Messiah. Why the trouble?I want to put even more tension here by showing you a contrast between two Bible characters. We read the story of Paul in a storm, which is a deliberate echo of an even more famous story about another Israelite preacher in a storm: Jonah. In the story of Jonah, God had told Jonah to go to Nineveh, a city full of wicked people, to tell them to repent or they would be destroyed. Afraid that the Ninevites would actually repent, Jonah gets into a boat going the opposite direction. God hurls a storm his way, and when Jonah gets thrown overboard, is swallowed by a great fish who eventually vomits him back on land. One preacher put it this way: “If you say NO when God says GO, you’ll be in a MESS till you say YES.” But with the story of Paul’s storm, we have to revise that a little bit: “If you say YES when you hear God’s call, you’ll be in a mess—after all!” (No, it doesn’t have the same ring to it!) The question I want to pose to you is a question every Christian must wrestle with: “Why do I, a believer in Jesus, find myself in such storms?” But it’s a question non-Christians should think about too. After all, most of Paul’s travel companions were not Christians. They too needed to understand why such a God, if he even existed, would allow his follower to go through such a trial.
