Mark Devotionals
[Please read and meditate on the passage before (or after) reading the devotion.]
Mark is so simple in his telling, “And they crucified him”. No present-day media hype, no detailed descriptions to evoke emotions, just a line in his Gospel. But maybe people didn’t need details. It was an everyday reality; the Roman highways were lined with crosses reminding their subjects what awaited their radical opponents. People knew the long hours of excruciating pain that preceded death on a cross. So while Mark does want to record the event, and his readers would have understood his words, do we understand? Do we understand that Jesus took all this agony on himself because he loved humankind – you and me? Do we understand that even till the end the world around him jeered, mocked, and ridiculed him, and he refused to retaliate because they really “did not know what they were doing”? Do we understand that that is still happening, and his response is still the same? Do we understand that in reality “No one took his life from him, but he intentionally laid it down” (cf. John10: 18) … for us? Have we allowed this understanding to break our hearts so that he would make them anew (cf. Ezekiel 36:26)?
Prayer: Search me, O God, and know my heart. Is it hard? Is it stubborn? Is it bitter? Is it marred by sin? Break my heart, O Lord, if that is the only way you can get me to respond to you. Give me a new heart, a heart of flesh; a heart that feels, a heart that is sensitive to your love, your words, your touch, your agony. Because I know that there must be agony in your heart as you see a world so broken and so in need of you. So make me new from within, daily, that I may respond to the world as you did – with love. Amen.
