Jesus’ probing question to the disciples—Do you not yet have faith?—can be understood in two complementary ways. The first, in light of the violent squall threatening to swamp their fragile little boat, concerns whether Jesus had the power to protect them from the raging waters. But the second, and perhaps more crucial, sense of his question arises from the disciples’ own anguished cry: Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?
My sense is that their doubting his loving care for them was more distressing to Jesus than any uncertainty about his power to save. For even if he had been unable to calm the sea, such a limitation would not have nullified his love for them. But if he truly did not care, then all his power and authority would have been impersonal—leaving their hearts empty and their lives purposeless and meaningless, a life only questionably preferable to being swallowed by the sea.
In our own lives, too, doubting God’s power or ability to save—while certainly troubling—is less spiritually corrosive than doubting his care and unfailing love for us. In our darkest moments, it is often this latter doubt that assails us and demands from us that unyielding trust in the One who never ceased loving and caring for David, even when, as our first reading says, he “utterly spurned the Lord.”