Today is Sunday, so what?
Mark 1:12-15
(After Jesus’baptism) And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
I find it very helpful when reading a Scripture passage to underline some of the words; those which stir in me some emotion, either negative or positive. Here I underlined ‘wilderness’, ‘Satan’, ‘wild beasts’, ‘good news’. I did not underline ‘Jesus’, ‘repent’, or ‘angels’, not that I do not consider them important but rather they do not evoke at this instant any emotion in me. Perhaps tomorrow they will and of course the same text will evoke very different word-choices and emotions in everyone else.
Once the selection is done, I string together the underlined words:
Wilderness-wild beasts,-Satan-good news.
Then I let the words sit with me all day and find their path into my subconscious. I revisit them later in the day. What comes up then is often surprising, not at all what my conscious mind would have come up with!
This is why it is so important to rely on ourselves when reading, not only on the Sunday homilist!
