News of further job losses evokes deep anxiety in many hearts. Those with jobs fear that they may lose them. The unemployed see every other job loss as lessening their own chances of being reemployed. For the young school- leavers and their parents, this anxiety becomes a cancer that erodes confidence and self- respect. It is a frightening situation. Many fear that we will be engulfed by the crisis. Followers of Christ could be forgiven for making their own of the anguished cry of the disciples in today’s gospel. ‘Master, do you not care? We are going down!’

It seems strange that the disciples should turn to Jesus for help during a storm on the Sea of Galilee. After all, they were the fishermen. They knew the angry waters and the gusting winds. Jesus was a landlubber, a tradesman from Nazareth with no touch of the sea in his veins. How could he help? Somehow, they had a glimpse of him as Lord of the wind and the sea, as Lord of all.

Today’s tempest is one of powerful greed on one side with hopeless helplessness on the other. Who will calm this tempest? God will. He is not just a landlubber in the sea of economics. He is Lord of all. He challenges us to call on him, to have faith in him, to live by that faith with boundless confidence in him because he is our Father.