The Martyrs of Uganda

         Matthew 8:23-27

       Why were you afraid, 

                            you of little faith? 

I’d have been mad- my default reaction. “WHY WERE WE AFRAID!!??  Why do you think - the damn boat was being swamped!”   

But then the answer is in the question, isn’t it? We were afraid precisely because we had not really believed that we would be ok even if  - even WHEN - the waters were not calm…. The waves were pretty darn big after all, and it LOOKED like…  (Which fits in with the first reading abut the calling of David in  I Samuel 16:1-13a, which starts out pretty turbulently as well.)  We had no faith and so we panicked. We forgot -or never really knew? - that if  Jesus was present, even if asleep, we could have gone to him and said “Jesus, we have this problem” rather than screaming him awake like idiots  “WE ARE PERISHING!!”  

Jesus work up, stood up, told both the sea and the wind to pipe dow and they did.  “And there was a dead calm.”  Talk about feeling stupid. Do you think they remembered the lesson when the same thing happened under a different guise? Apparently not. We’re all a little slow. 
But beloved nonetheless.