Monday 1st, February
I. Heb 11:32-40
II. Mk 5:1-20
Theme: Jesus: The Restorer of Our Brokenness.
Tland they met with another storm, this time a storm of the human spirit, a man who was so disturbed that people had him chained so that he couldn’t harm himself or others. He had also been banished to the local graveyard, to the tombs. He was living among the dead, cut off from the living. The Lord’s response to him was not to chain him up but to release him, not only from his chains but from the spirit that left him so disturbed. We have an image here of how the Lord works. He works to free people from all that diminishes and dehumanizes them.
We may never be as disturbed as this man evidently was, but we can all find ourselves out of joint from time to time, out of sorts with ourselves and with others, feeling only half alive within ourselves, tossed and thrown about. It is then that we need to come before the Lord as the man in the gospel did. His initial approach to the Lord was quite aggressive; it was full of anger, ‘What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?’ That can be our starting point too when we come before the Lord in prayer. Yet, he is never put off by our disturbance within. If we allow him, he will pour his peace into our hearts; he will calm us as he calmed the storm, and having done so he will send us out to share his peace and mercy with others, just as he sent out the man in the gospel reading.
Bro. Anthony Peter SMM
II BTh