Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Mark 6:50-56

Mark 6:50-56

  If we're being honest, there's a lot of things I don't understand.  There are evenings where I sit on my couch and just wonder... 
  I wonder about the power of death and evil in the world.  (If you ever want to experience despair, just read social media arguments -- nothing quite like reading people arguing on the internet.)  Things on this world are not the way they're supposed to be, and it doesn't always feel like they're getting better, does it?  COVID has been brutal, both in devastation to personal health as well as economically to millions who are out of work or facing impossible decisions with businesses they own.  
  I wonder about eternity.  It's so far beyond what I can comprehend -- my mind is limited by the time and space that I inhabit, and yet I try and grasp what heaven is like, and it is so far beyond me that I am sometimes left with nothing but questions.
  I wonder about a lot of things, and yet the reality is that no matter how stunned I sometimes am, shaking my head at what is going on, not understanding what is going on in the world around me, there are times when the reality of the Holy Spirit penetrates my heart and I'm left with nothing else but to fall on my knees and praise God.  
  The disciples saw Jesus perform countless miracles, and yet it didn't always penetrate their hearts.  They didn't always get it.  So let's not pretend that we'd be in a different place if we had walked with Jesus on dusty roads in 32 AD and seen him perform miracles.  Even the people who did that didn't always believe!  It takes an act of the Holy Spirit to help the Truth penetrate our hearts.  Only then can we perceive that there is a God in heaven who is not only all powerful but also all loving.  
  Last evening, I was talking to some children about their mother.  She had been quite a woman, and her son said something remarkable -- he said that she was a woman who always had answers, but when she didn't, she went searching -- she had to find the Truth.
  It's what we're all looking for.  And yet we sometimes miss it.  Even when it happens in front of it, we see but we don't perceive.  
  May the reality of Jesus Christ penetrate our hearts, and may it do so in a way that it awakens our sleeping hearts, that we may go and tell others to bring their sickness, to bring their brokenness, to bring their lives to the Savior, the One who walks with us and heals us, the One who enters into our despair and gives us hope, the One who goes to death to find life for us, the One who comes to our darkness and brings light.

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