Lisa L. Harkness | Peace, Be Still | Oct 2020 General Conference | Faith To Act

Peace, Be Still
By Lisa L. Harkness

First Counselor in the Primary General Presidency

The Savior teaches us how to feel peace and calm even when the winds blow fiercely around us and billowing waves threaten to sink our hopes.

When our children were young, our family spent a few days at a beautiful lake. One afternoon some of the children put on life jackets before jumping off a deck and into the water. Our youngest daughter watched with hesitation, carefully observing her siblings. With all the courage she could muster, she plugged her nose with one hand and jumped. She immediately popped up and with a bit of panic in her voice yelled, “Help me! Help me!”

Now, she was not in any mortal danger; her life jacket was doing its job, and she was floating safely. We could have reached out and pulled her back on the deck with little effort. Yet from her perspective, she needed help. Perhaps it was the chill of the water or the newness of the experience. In any case, she climbed back onto the deck, where we wrapped her in a dry towel and complimented her on her bravery.

Whether we are old or young, many of us have, in moments of distress, uttered with urgency words such as “Help me!” “Save me!” or “Please, answer my prayer!”

Such an event happened with Jesus’s disciples during His mortal ministry. In Mark we read that Jesus “began again to teach by the sea side: and there was gathered unto him a great multitude.”1 The crowd became so numerous that Jesus “entered into a ship”2 and spoke from its deck. All day long He taught the people in parables as they sat on the shore.

“And … when the [evening] was come,” He said unto His disciples, “Let us pass over unto the other side. And when they had sent away the multitude,”3 they departed from the shore and were on their way across the Sea of Galilee. Finding a spot in the back of the ship, Jesus lay down and quickly fell asleep. Soon “there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was [nearly] full”4 of water.

Many of Jesus’s disciples were experienced fishermen and knew how to handle a boat in a storm. They were His trusted—indeed, His beloved—disciples. They had left jobs, personal interests, and family to follow Jesus. Their faith in Him was evident by their presence in the boat. And now their boat was in the middle of a tempest and on the very verge of sinking.

We don’t know how long they battled to keep the boat afloat in the storm, but they woke Jesus with a bit of panic in their voices, saying:

“Master, carest thou not that we perish?”5

“Lord, save us: we perish.”6

They called Him “Master,” and that He is. He is also “Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of heaven and earth, the Creator of all things from the beginning.”7

Jesus Christ
From His position in the boat, Jesus arose and rebuked the wind and said unto the raging sea, “Peace, be still. And the wind [did cease], and there was a great calm.”8 Ever the Master Teacher, Jesus then taught His disciples through two simple yet loving questions. He asked:

“Why are ye so fearful?”9

“Where is your faith?”10

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