I’ve always been fond of the story of the two men in a boat in the midst of a severe storm. As the waves rose and the boat threatened to capsize, the men knew that they needed help. They were not religious men, but they decided that prayer was all that was left, so there in the teeth of the gale, one of them shouted the only prayer he could muster, “O God, you know that I haven’t bothered you for the past 15 years, and if you’ll just get us out of this mess, I promise you that I won’t bother you again for 15 more.

Unfortunately, that says too much about our prayer life. Most of us call upon the Lord only in desperation. But that’s not what this sermon is about. It is about a storm at sea — in fact, it’s about two storms at sea.

We just read about one of those in our Scripture lesson.

Ea…