Mark 1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ

Months ago a friend, whose children have grown up, gave me his old telescope. It is about a metre long, dusty and dirty with its tripod legs rusted in the fully extended position, a result of years stored under his house. The eye pieces were in a plastic bag, and the one I looked at back then was broken and unusable. I held little hope that it worked and didn't even try it out. So it was stashed under our house in all the garden stuff, between the stack of old newspapers and the rusty wire and star pickets. Unused again.

Then the storm came and we were forced to throw the old wire and some of the pickets onto the small mountain of rubbish out on the nature strip. The newspapers, from the past three years, heavy with flood water, now thickly cover the" vegetable" beds, smothering the crops of weeds and grass. The telescope only had its tripod wet so it was one of the few things from that pile under the house to be actually kept.

Being so obvious now, the other night as a fullish moon rose, I dragged out the telescope. and tried out an eye piece. Wow!! I could see the craters on the moon! And the the disc of Jupiter! I dragged the kids out of the warm house, they were vaguely impressed. But it was too cold for my wife.

Then a week ago I noticed that Venus was high in the dusk sky, so the scope came out again and this time I tried out another eyepiece (there are three in all) and this one was a higher resolution and Venus looked like a small version of the waxing moon with a crescent of light on the sunward side. Jupiter was still high and I could see three of its moons!

But below Venus was another untwinkling body. Was it Mercury? It was definitely a planet. I excitedly called the youngest, and his neighborhood friend away from the online games. And it was his 12 year old eyes who found that "Mercury" had rings! Another look and some focusing and it was confirmed, we had Saturn!

I have only ever seen the rings of Saturn through a telescope once before, with a bunch of noisy, pushing kids, but here in the quiet of my backyard (and at much smaller resolution) this sighting made a deep impression on me.

Saturn was real! It actually was up there, I could see it!

So to confirm it, the scope came out last night and the white little planet and the silver rings were still there! I even convinced my beautiful woman to leave the warmth and take a look.

I think Mark One has been a neglected telescope for me. Jesus Christ is real. He has been there all the time but I haven't taken the time to look.

Who is this Jesus I have been introduced to?

• He is Good News - He preaches the Gospel everywhere, that is His purpose in coming. He lives the Gospel, by healing the demon possessed, the fevered and the unclean leper. He teaches the Gospel with authority. He invites belief in the Gospel. And all this is just the beginning!


• He is the LORD - the Son of God. The Creator and re-creator, God of the Old Testament, YAHWEH. Even the unclean spirits knew that He was the "holy One of God".


• He is the Cleaner - of men with unclean spirits and unclean diseases (leprosy)


• He brings a new and close-by kingdom - He's the King


• He demands change - Repentance, a change of heart, a change of thinking. The biggest change of all. He has four men leave their occupations and family to become, not fishermen, but fishers of men. Rebuking the spirits, He changes the thought life of a possessed man. He keeps moving, changing location, there is always a "next town". He tries to silence the leper, now bursting with health, demanding he go to the temple silently.


• He cares for the rejected leper, even touching him. He also cares for the loved mother-in-law too.


• He attracts - first disciples then crowds, the sick, the possessed and the curious.


• He prayed - in the wilderness and came back with a sense of mission

Jesus you are still here, sorry for neglecting You.

Mark 1:35-39 He Went Out

Even after a hectic evening, Jesus gets up early to be alone and pray. This is a favourite text for all of those people who, over the years, have tried to improve my prayer life. And it still isn't what it should be. Yes, I wake early, but bed is warm and I'm too busy obsessing over the things I need to do that day.

Maybe the secret is to actually pray - talk to my Father. Maybe that is why my whole devotional life isn't up to scratch. Yes ... I need to pray more.

But the disciples go looking for Him because "everyone" wants Him. Already? Weren't they satisfied with the night before. What else did they want of Him? If they are already healed then it must be for the entertainment of seeing others healed. Maybe they had brought people who had chosen not to be healed the night before.

But they would have to wait, Jesus didn't even go back to town, that day anyway. He states His purpose as preaching to more people. He had to invite more people to change their thinking and believe the good news.

His job was not to 'just' heal and do miracles. So why did he heal? Why not just preach?

Why do we love miracles? I guess for the same reason we go to movies... to see something new and spectacular. But to hear good news; less spectacular but more satisfying? More necessary? Certainly is... all the miracles are signposts to what Jesus says. He felt that what He said spoke louder than what He did. It's just the opposite with us. I need to take more notice of what He said.

And true to His purpose, Jesus preaches in the synagogues of "all Galilee", everywhere, in every town - traveling and preaching.

Oh, and just as an aside, casting out demons! He had to do that to reach some of the people. Physically sick people can hear the gospel preached, are demon-possessed people prevented from hearing?