I once knew two women who went on safari.
They were sensible women, the types who pack extra sunscreen and sensible shoes, and they had flown halfway across the world to see the great theater of the African wild. They climbed into one of those open-top Jeeps like you see in Jurassic Park, the kind that looks like a bathtub on wheels, and set off with a local guide.
As they trundled through the bush, the guide gave a wide berth to the animals we in the West—or at least in our nursery rhymes—reckon are harmless. He skirted the elephants. He wouldn’t go near the hippos.
This was odd to the women, but the guide knew better. He knew that the hippo is a neurotic murder tank.
Then, about an hour in, the guide stopped the jeep. He killed the engine. The silence of the plains washed over them, heavy and hot.
He pointed. Lying right there, not ten feet from the door of the vehicle, was a lion. Aslan, King Mufasa, the whole vibe.
The women froze. They looked at the open top of the Jeep. They looked at the lion. They looked at the guide. One of my friends, her voice dropping to a whisper that was barely a breath, asked, “Sir, isn’t this dangerous?
The guide didn’t reach for his rifle. He didn’t even look tense. He thought for a second, turned to them with a smile, and said:
“Ma’am, he’s a lion. Why would he be frightened of two little white women?”
The lion opened one yellow eye, let out a massive yawn, and rolled over to go back to sleep.
A Strength in Yawning
I have been thinking about that lion for a long time.
Maybe it’s because I spend so much time researching what the bloody blazes is going on with men today. And we all know what I mean. If you open your phone and let the algorithm take the wheel, you will be bombarded with a very specific, very loud vision of what it means to be a man. We call it the “Alpha.”
The internet version of the Alpha is a curious animal. He is loud. He is aggressive. He is constantly asserting his dominance, constantly framing the world as a zero-sum game of conquerors and the conquered. He talks a great deal about ‘high value,’ about demanding respect, about not letting anyone get one over on him. He postures. He barks. He struts. He wants to be the lion.
But the lion in the story did not roar. He did not charge the jeep to prove he was the apex predator. He didn’t need to post a video about his grindset.
He yawned.
That yawn was the ultimate display of power. It was a statement of absolute, cellular confidence. It said, I know what I am. I know what I can do. And because I know who I am, I have nothing to prove to you.
Maybe the men most worthy of the word ‘masculine’ are, paradoxically to our world, the men who speak the least, listen the hardest, and who seem rather unfazed by the twists and turns of life. Maybe the goal isn’t to be the man who clears the room with his shout, but the man who calms the room with his presence.
The Lion of Judah
But where do we go to find the model for this Unfazed Man? The Lion of Judah is the only answer.
Consider the scene in the boat (Mark 4). The storm is raging. The disciples—seasoned fishermen, men with salt in their beards and calluses on their hands—are losing their minds. They are scanning the horizon, and the horizon says “Death.” They are frantic.
And where is Jesus? He is asleep on a cushion.
It is the theological equivalent of the lion’s yawn.
The disciples wake Him up, shouting, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” They are offended by His lack of panic. They want Him to be frantic like them, because panic feels like action. Panic feels like doing something.
Jesus stands up and speaks. “Peace. Be still.”
In the Greek, he speaks only two words—the kind of words you say to a toddler throwing a tantrum in Target. And the storm listens. Not because of the volume of Jesus’ voice, but because of the authority of the One speaking. It seems to me that true power rarely needs to shout.
If you know you are a son of the King, if you know that you stand in Him. You can look at the chaos of the culture, the shifting tides of the economy, and the noise of the internet, and you don’t have to roar back. You don’t have to posture. There is a magnificent freedom in this. It is the freedom of the man who no longer needs to prove he is a man.
