Calming Grace

Are you familiar with the old gospel song “Master, the Tempest Is Raging”?  From childhood it has been in the top 10 of my favorites list.  It rolls like the raging sea.  It has huge crescendos followed by double pianissimos.  It is a song that is truly alive.  One day when I was filling the pulpit in a different church I mentioned that song in my sermon.  I received a lot of blank stares, but the few who knew it brightened considerably.  After the sermon the organist went to her instrument and played it by heart. 

  At the end of the first crashing verse, which is a full page long, the song hits the brakes into a slower speed and reduces from a double loud to double soft sound.  But then it builds again throughout the full page chorus to a rousing pitch before colliding with a new slower tempo and finishing with a double soft voice.  Wow!!  The last two lines of the chorus read, “They all shall sweetly obey My will, peace be still, peace be still.  They all shall sweetly obey My will, peace, peace, be still.” 

Does that song sound like your life?  Does it sometimes crash and rush and build to a frenzied pitch?  Do the events of your life sometimes to seem to rage out of control until you feel you are perishing?  In the third line of the first verse of this song you can hear the disciples cry out, “Carest Thou not that we perish?”  Have you ever been there?  Then there is grace for you.

It is called calming grace.  Jesus rose up in that boat and said, “Peace, be still” and it was.  Jesus is ever present to calm the rage and offer peace in the midst of the storm.  He is there to calm the grief and offer hope of reunion.  He is there; He is there; He is there!  I am not into mantras, but if you would really like to have one here it is, “Jesus is here.”  What He is doing here is pouring out His grace into the needs of our lives.  He is here to comfort and to calm.  He is here to settle our fears into His certainty and to assure us that His power supersedes our needs.  “Jesus is here.  Peace, be still.”  Here is the first verse and chorus of Mary Baker’s great song.

Master, the tempest is raging!  The billows are tossing high!  The sky is o’ershadowed with blackness, no shelter or help is nigh.

“Carest Thou not that we perish?” How canst Thou lie asleep, when each moment so madly is threatening a grave in the angry deep?

The winds and the waves shall obey My will, Peace, be still!  Whether the wrath of the storm tossed sea, or demons or men or whatever it be, no water can swallow the ship where lies, the Master of ocean and earth and skies.  They all shall sweetly obey My will; Peace be still, peace, be still.  They all shall sweetly obey My will; Peace, peace, be still!

  The Friday Benediction

Until Monday, my friends, may the good God envelop you with His grace; may you prove the common confession of faith, “I believe in the holy Christian church and in the fellowship of the saints”, and may you be enriched with joy and hope as you exercise that confession this weekend.  Amen

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