Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

I will be condemned for comparing the Lord Jesus to dogs. But the phrase “Let sleeping dogs lie” teaches an important principle (like “Don’t rock the boat”) – some things were meant to be left alone, ignored, and not disturbed.

That’s not how Jesus’s disciples felt. They were into a boat midway on the lake (of Galilee) when a tempest – “a swirling wind” – came over them. A swirling wind over lakes is a common phenomenon even now. Jesus, however, was sound asleep (hypnos) in the boat (Mark says he even had a pillow under his head!).

The disciples woke him up (egiro) and said,

“Lord, Lord, we are dying!” (Luke 8:24a)

I love their conclusion! I know friends like them. Jeff was a hypochondriac. Whenever he felt ill, he said, “I am dying.” He told me that I should put on his tombstone, “I told you I was sick,” because often I didn’t believe he was sick and he was convinced he had something gravely ill. (Sadly, he died by drowning, and I couldn’t put that inscription.) Another friend, if she has a headache, claims, “I have a brain tumor.”

“Lord, Lord, we are dying!” said the disciples.

Jesus got up (egiro) and rebuked the raging wind and the waters. They subsided and became calm (8:24b). Then the Lord asked them,

“Where is your faith?” (8:25a).

They were amazed, confused, worried, and wondered with one another what kind of a person he was that the winds and water obeyed him (8:25b).

Besides the obvious nature of the miracle, this event prefigures something else will happen in Jesus’s life – he would sleep (hypnos) and come back to life (egiro). The Gospel writers used these exact words to refer to his death (sleep) and resurrection (awake). Whereas the disciples feared that they were dying, the Lord demonstrated that they were only asleep and would rise again to life, just as he was asleep and awake (arisen).

When tempests come to our lives – some are harsher than others – we feel like we are dying. But the Lord Jesus reminds us that, for Christians, the realities are sleep and awake (not death eternally). That should give us hope to endure whatever circumstances we are in. Where is our faith? Our faith is in him, not in our circumstances.