Perspective is everything, isn't it?
Take a picture of a man and a woman both holding a purse in the street. If you're a man of honor and integrity, then you assume he's giving it back to her after getting it back from a thief. If you're a woman who's been taken advantage of, then you assume he's stealing it from her. What if she's taking it from him? What if she's giving it to him? What if they're both con artists that just stole it from some other person not in the picture? You catch my drift?
Perspective really can be everything to how we view and handle experiences, and over the past couple of weeks while reading through the Gospel of Mark I've been blessed to see a perspective that I hadn't really taken time to notice before.
The first thing I noticed (although it's not hard to notice and someone else actually pointed it out to me) is Mark's use of the word or some form of the word 'immediate'. All throughout the book it seems like Mark just uses the word over and over. My English teacher from high school would have circled it after the first few times and written 'redundant' in big, cursive, almost-illegible red script. But I think he's trying to get some point across by his repeated use of the word. For a while I couldn't pin-point it exactly, but my second observation helped a little...
The second thing I noticed about the book of Mark was an emotion. It seeps through the pages, especially near the end, and it just overwhelmed me with every page I read! I mean, normally there is a verse that stands out or a lesson that intrigues me, but an emotion? It was new to me.
The only verse the came to mind the whole time I was reading was that verse in Isaiah 53,
"He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth."
And the only word that came to mind the whole time I was reading was resignation. Of course, that sounds weak and pales in comparision to the word I was really trying to think of - submission. I know, submission isn't an emotion. But I don't know any other way to explain it. I felt...through the way the text was written and the order of the events and even with this word immediate coming up all the time, I felt the emotion Jesus must have felt as he submitted. Can that even do it justice? Does that even make any sense?
I don't know. What I do know is it was eye-opening for me. It was real and raw and human. It helped me see a different side of Jesus than I normally see or think about. Above all, it helped me understand more of why Jesus went to the cross for me.
He perfectly understood that God's will is perfect...that God's will can be trusted...that God's will has everyone's best interests at heart.
So, after much verbiage, here are two things I've gleaned from my reading of Mark:
1. If you want to be more like Jesus, submit to the will of God. You can't change it anyway...
2. If you want to be better at submitting, try this new word 'immediately'. Jesus didn't delay in submitting to the will of the Father, and neither should we.
