According 2 Mark

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Don’t Be Afraid, I’m With You

“He saw them straining at the oars, because the wind was against them. Very early in the morning he came toward them walking on the sea and wanted to pass by them. When they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out, because they all saw him and were terrified. Immediately he spoke with them and said, ‘Have courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.’ Then he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased.“

Mark 6:48-50

I’m not a very good swimmer. I can admit that, and while I don’t shy away from it, I also don’t usually plan any long distance swims in open water, just for fun, either! Like a lot of people, there’s something about deep water that just scares the bajebers out of me. It’s unsettling, and when the water is rough as well and I’m struggling to stay afloat, the survival instinct kicks into high gear, creating an emotional state of sheer panic. I think that’s what the disciples must have felt as the wind kicked up and they began to struggle. I can relate to the fear they felt as they struggled with their task. There have been times that I have struggled, too, and to make things worse, right in the middle of it all a storm pops up to add yet another layer of fear and anxiety.

Earlier in the chapter (v. 45) Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go ahead of him to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he went up to the mountain to pray. He set them to their undertaking. God does this sometimes. He puts us to a task, watching and praying over us from afar as we struggle with it, trying to figure it out on our own, saying “I got this” while He waits for us to realize that the task is given to us so that He may work through us. His purposes are not at all clear to us, catching only small glimpses at times, but His simple request of us is that we yoke ourselves to Him and trust that He’s got this.

This whole tale, as Mark tells it, is a metaphor, an observation about just how difficult it can be to follow Jesus. He sets us in our boat (life) and sends us out into the deep (the world) to accomplish his will. It’s not easy. We push against the oars, struggling with the prevailing winds of popular opinion and “consensus” that surround us with doubt and uncertainty. We become mired in the moment, following fear rather than faith.

Similarly, this same story in Matthew, where Peter tries to walk on water, is also a commentary about how we handle the tasks that God gives us to do. It goes further by illustrating how hard it can be to keep our faith during times of turmoil, even when we know that Jesus is right there in front of us, ready to help as we call out to Him. We still stumble, lose our focus and let the fear of the unknown control our actions as He stands by with outstretched hand. He simply asks us to not only believe in Him, to also believe Him, to keep our faith, to trust, to let Him take control of the yoke that guides us to where He would have us go, all the while telling us, “have courage! Don’t be afraid. I am with you.”

A Prayer: Heavenly Father, Help me to know beyond all doubt that you are there, beside me as I struggle through this life. Give me Your strength, Your courage to move forward without fear. Give me eyes to see Your will for my life and ears to hear Your voice as you whisper, “I am with you.” Amen

~SLM

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Our Way

Sometimes everything in life seems to be such a fight, a struggle, when nothing seems to go the way you’ve planned it, and obstacles start flying toward you faster than you can duck. When the shit hits the fan, it’s so easy to get off course, get depressed, and wonder just what the hell God is trying to say. It’s funny how we automatically assume that God wants to thwart our plans, to knock us down and show us His displeasure, but is this really God’s way, or is it our way of looking at it?

In Mark 8:34-36, Christ tells us, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?”  And, it occurs to me (in the midst of my own struggles) that maybe the obstacles, the road blocks, are really God’s way of checking our faith, of testing our resolve to play it out in God’s time and in God’s way, giving us the chance to lay down our selfish desires and follow.

~SLM

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What We Own

Lately, I’ve been pondering Mark 10:17-25, and just what it means to give up what we own and follow. It’s a tall order to walk away from all that we possess, to give up all that we hold. In fact, it’s an extremely difficult proposition for most of us, because we give our possessions a place of prominence in our lives, finding comfort in them, using them as a crutch to our self-esteem, and defining ourselves by them.  We feel we are giving something up, sacrificing, when we “down size” our homes from 4000 to 2000 square feet, when we don’t get a new car every other year, or when we skip the latest generation of smart phone.  Our idea of what is true, of what really matters, becomes distorted, hijacked by delusions and rationalizations that put us, and what we own, front and center in our lives.

When you think about it, giving up what we own is about more than just our physical possessions, because we also own our thoughts, our ideas, and our beliefs. It means giving up what we hold most dear. So, when Christ asks us to “sell what you own and give to the poor,” before we may follow him, he’s asking us to transform how we see things, to change our minds, and to rethink our lives. Being able to give up what we own shows a willingness to put things into perspective, to disown our preconceived notions, and to sort out what holds real importance, real meaning.

We cannot go into it with predetermined philosophies; we cannot follow in this way. As we think, so shall we be, therefore we have to look at it with new eyes, to hear it with new ears, to realize that it takes a special mind-set to look beyond the apparent, past all that we think we know and silently wait on God.

~SLM

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Bigger Than The Box

Sometimes, because of human nature, and how we assimilate external stimuli, we tend to categorize things, sort them out and stack them up in nice, neat little piles, containing them within a certain space. We even do this with God. We box Him up in a proper little package and define Him in our terms, how we think He ought to be, but we cannot limit God in such a way. Mark tells us that Christ said to his disciples as they questioned him about salvation, “With people it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God” (Mark 10:27). God is bigger than the box we make for him. He is more than our rudimentary grasp of Him; He is everything and nothing at all, He is every possibility, and He cannot be neatly filed away into our definition of whom and what He is. Sometimes, God’s message for us is not what we want to hear, or how we want to hear it, and we simply cannot afford to close our minds, because we don’t like the message or the messenger.
In the search for truth, we must be ever-vigilant in our quest to recognize the voice of Wisdom. We cannot pick and choose how and when God will give us guidance. He speaks to us in many voices, and not just the voices we know and love, agree with and respect. He uses every means at His disposal to share His truths with us, and it is up to us to have eyes to see and ears to hear.
~SLM