Mark, Day Nine

Yes, I know I skipped TWO days of posting on Mark, but it was mostly intentional.  I took a break from the computer.  I still read Scripture, but I didn't want to turn the computer on.  Sometimes I need a break from technology.  It's too easy to become tied to it.  But here's the next (long!) chapter of Mark.

Mark 6:

• First, Jesus goes home.  Which seems a little odd considering his family has been treating him poorly, but I guess we get homesick even when home life isn't perfect.  And what better place to practice healing and preaching good news than one's home, right?  Except it doesn't work out well.  Instead, these people who should have known him well rejected him.  They couldn't accept that this kid they'd watched grow up (or grown up with) had become something special.  "And He [Jesus] wondered at their unbelief" (v. 6, NASB).  What a sad time for Jesus.
• But he keeps up his traveling teaching and healing.  And he starts to send out his disciples in pairs to go do some traveling teaching and healing on their own.  And they did!  These disciples who seem pretty clueless about Jesus a lot of the time still did some good work.  They didn't need all the right answers.
• Then there's a strange little interlude where Mark explains how some people think Jesus might be John the Baptist returned from the dead, and he goes on to explain how John died.  Poor John.
• Then after their new teaching and healing duties, Jesus gathers the disciples and they go off in a boat to rest a while.  But people see them in the boat and gather on shore waiting for them - a huge crowd.  And so Jesus goes ashore, teaches, and feeds them.  Another regular Sunday School story.  I like that the crowd didn't just get enough food to quell their hunger - they all ate as much as they wanted and there were still leftovers.  Jesus provides an abundance.
• Then Jesus makes the disciples get in the boat again, but he goes off to pray by himself.  And that night when the sea becomes rough, he walks on the water out to them.  BUT, "he intended to pass them by" (v. 48).  Isn't that kinda funny?  He was walking out to them but didn't really want to get in the boat with them and would've just gone on by if they hadn't noticed him and been freaked out by this ghost on the water.  Jesus was just out for a stroll on the rough water.  And calming the water as he went, I suppose.  Makes our neighborhood walks seem kinda lame.  Being Jesus must've been fun sometimes.  Not all the time, but sometimes.