Mark 1:16 – 20 And Immediately

Note: This Post is part of the series “Studies in Mark” see the Series Index for other posts in this series.

16 Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. 17And Jesus said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.” 18And immediately they left their nets and followed him. 19And going on a little farther, he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, who were in their boat mending the nets. 20And immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him.–Mark 1:16 – 20 (ESV)

There is a lot to be said for an immediate response to the Gospel. Many times we take too much time praying about something or mulling it over. Opportunities to serve God come and go and never come again. Once we miss them, we never get them back but the memory of them comes back again and again.

Just trust me on this one. If you’re called: Go. If you’re called, Go right now, right when you feel that call and do that which you have been called to do with all your might. Sure you might screw it up at the beginning. You’re a human, you ought to be used to it by now. But the reality is, as this passage illustrates, that the time to go is when you’re called. It’s a ‘here I am, send me’ mentality that you see in all the accounts of the calls of the prophets. Well, except Moses and Gideon and a few others. But what that tells me is that God is going to have his way no matter what we do. Remember Mark? His was an ‘and immediately’ kind of thinking.

And he was a very young man. I love it when I see young people in ministry because they don’t know about all the things they CAN’T do yet. So they just do them anyway. I know, there’s a lot to be said for wisdom and the benefits of age and maturity but young people bring such energy and vitality with them that we would be fools to turn them away or tell them they are too young. Chances are that if they’re convinced of a call that God has them where he wants them. Also, they may be fighting the thing so don’t punch their ticket to Tarshish. Lead them down to the road to Ninevah and see them on their way.

Other posts in this series.

Well, 2007 is in the can…

Well 2007 is gone and we’re looking out over the green, untouched expanse of 2008. I wonder where it will take us and what we will do. I wonder how we shall go about glorifying God with our lives and with our blogging.

I’m not sure. I don’t think we ever know for sure how the end of a race will turn out. I remember a few folks who made predictions and saw them come through. Babe Ruth called his shot and made it. Maybe he was just that good or maybe the whole idea intimidated the pitcher into mediocrity. Who knows? I don’t know that he would admit it either way.

But here’s some thoughts and hopes for 2008.

We bought the kids a Nintendo Wii for Christmas. I know, its a video game and I know a lot of folks say they’re evil but at least it’s not an Xbox. Most of the games I’ve seen for Xbox or Playstation 3 involve shooting, killing, and otherwise maiming other people and things. Not that its not fun, but I don’t think I want my kid’s learning how to snipe someone in an online free for all. Face it, these Wii games are fun. It’s fun you can have with your kids. It’s mostly clean fun you can have with your kids that doesn’t require a lot of explanation if you get the right games. And its just like anything else you do for or with your kids: you have to watch it. Motives count in this situation too. Here’s the deal–we bought Wii Sports and Big Brain Academy but all they’ve really wanted to play so far is Wii Play, which is the incredibly fun game assortment that came with the console.

See I remember when I was a kid that my grandparents bought each set of grandkids one of these things. My Uncle got an Atari and my Dad got Intellivision for his kids. Here’s the difference: at our house it was a babysitter. At my Uncles house it was a family activity and I LOVED going over there to play that thing. The graphics weren’t that great but the ‘togetherness’ was fantastic. The Wii is tons better in the graphics department. The Games are fun and sometimes educational. But we all had fun on the thing during the Holiday and we learned a little more about being a family. That was worth the cost of admission right there.

I’m looking forward to HDTV. It just looks fantastic, you know? The last TV upgrade I remember, other than satellite, was HBO. It was this little box that sat on top of your tube that you clicked on just like the Intellivision. And it was movies and videos and all sorts of things you couldn’t get on the other two or three channels. (Sometimes four if the UHF channels were coming in). I know that the FCC is requiring all the TV stations to convert over to HD signals right now and that pretty soon (sometime in 2008) our TV’s aren’t going to work anymore. I’m sure Sony’s pretty happy about that. My being ‘tweaked’ about being required to buy a new TV is fighting a losing battle against my excitement at ‘getting’ to buy a new TV. We’ll see what happens there but I’m usually a ‘half-full’ kind of guy.

I downloaded Ubuntu 7.10 the other day and bought some books about it recently. I thought I’d try to get it to run on my laptop but I still haven’t been able to get the thing to work yet. I’m trying, though, and I have a version on order that is supposed to work with my laptop. I still don’t have an iPhone, and iPod, or any iTunes, but I’m looking forward to using eMusic for most of the rest of the year. I don’t think I’ll ever get into facebook or YouTube. The former seems to be mostly for High School kids and the latter requires much more bandwidth than I have available either from my ISP or my own cranium. I do pretty well just to put text on screen.

I haven’t made a big deal about this on the blog but I try to be green where I can. I’m not a tree-hugger or anything like that, but I’ve got a great compost operation and my garden–which seems to get bigger every year–is completely organic. We don’t have a local recycling program, so I can’t impact the trash situation in that way, but I put about 5-10 gallons of kitchen waste into the garden every week. Hey its good for the Earth and you don’t have to worry about all those chemicals in your vegetables that way. I’d like to get a solar energy system installed on the house and maybe a wind turbine. Who wouldn’t living in a rural area? The electricity rates are awful. And no I’m not one of those militant global warming folks. I do it because its healthy and responsible–the jury still out I guess.

That’s way more than I intended, but it’s just a few things I thought I’d share. Hope your 2008 finds you well blessed by the Lord.

Gleefully past the Holidays

I don’t know about you but I always heave a self-conscious sigh of relief sometime after New Year’s Day. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the Holidays or that I’m not grateful that Christ was born so that we could celebrate it…. It just grates on my nerves after about two weeks or so. I’m not a humbug or anything, but I can at times sympathize with those who are.

Anyway, I actually got a lot of writing done over the last few weeks I just haven’t had time to post it up yet. It’s coming though, never fear.

Praying for Tom Brady

I read this post and this one and felt like I should post a link. Go read and pray…its a great way to start the New Year.