Mark 6: 30-34, 53-56 Picture this: It’s February 1964. Traffic in Mid-town Manhattan is an epic nightmare. Police are manning the barricades. And an army
“The tragedy of our country today is that most of us do not believe that we are loved by God—not really. If we do think so, we don’t think so emotionally. Consequently our much-vaunted individualism is selfish instead of selfless. Rather than accepting our value as a gift, we think we have to prove it.”
Mark 6: 14-29 Why does Mark interrupt his revelation of the divinity of Jesus to relate in detail the evil doings of the Herod clan?
Let’s also learn from how Jesus handles rejection. It doesn’t ruin his day. It doesn’t put him into an inert funk. It energizes him. He accepts it as a challenge and he passes that challenge on to us.
How many times have we given things up for dead? How many good intentions have we failed to act on? How many relationships have we neglected? How many chances to forgive have we ignored? How many chances to ask forgiveness have we let slide? How many calls for help have we ignored? How many opportunities to witness Christ’s love have we passed up?
We are not whole, and our communities are not whole. It is not an exaggeration to say that we are in the midst of a storm maybe more than one.
No astronomer’s telescope or psychiatrist’s couch has ever found a storm that could not be calmed by the love of Christ. His peace awaits us, safe on the shore… only a prayer away.
As we walk by faith, not by sight, we may feel that we have been set down in desolate spots at times. Then the morning comes, and we behold the wonders of heaven, right beneath our feet.
If we live to return God’s love, he will surely bring the growth and the greatness… not the single season kind, but the eternal kind… blooming in God’s perennial garden, watered by the saving blood of Christ.
Evil has met its match. God’s unconquerable love is revealed in the astounding identity of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Savior of the World.