Time for the Beginning

Here’s an understatement I never caught before.  The first verse of the first chapter in the Gospel According to Mark reads:

“The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

Wow!

Imagine being in Mark’s place for a moment.  Here’s a guy who spent time with Jesus, witnessed the miracles, experienced the powerful delivery of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, and grew in his personal relationship with the God of the universe as he shared the gospel by divine power and inspiration to a multitude of people on many mission trips.

He completely understood who Jesus was: the eternal God – existing before time - born as a man, died on a cross, raised to life again by the Holy Spirit, and ascended to heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father to intercede for unrighteous man before a righteous and holy God, so that we would not perish in our sin, but have opportunity for eternal life with Him.

After thirty years of sharing his testimony about how Jesus transforms lives, some people in Rome said, “Hey, this is good news!  Can you write it down so we can go over it when you’re not around?” (Or something along those lines.)

So Mark says, “Sure,” and sits down one day with feather and scroll (or whatever tools he would have used to write with back then) and suddenly it hits him – “Where do I begin?”

How do you begin to tell the story of Someone who has no beginning; who has always existed and always will?  How do you write down enough to demonstrate to your readers that Jesus wasn’t just a great man, but the Great “I Am”?

I believe Mark wrote his Gospel the same way he lived his life – by the power of the Holy Spirit.  God knew who Mark’s audience would be and prepared Mark specifically for this task throughout his life.  All Mark needed to do was sit down with God and let God tell His own story through Mark’s hands.

The Gospel of Mark is the clearest, get-to-the-point Gospel of the four written because that’s how the Roman’s needed to hear it.  I like hearing it this way too.  God showed Mark the right point in time to begin his written testimony.  It immediately captures your attention and doesn’t let go until the end.

Because of His great love for us, a timeless God came into time to carry out the greatest rescue in all of history, and then fit His story into our concept of time, so we could easily understand it.

“The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

Does His beginning fit into your time schedule?  He made time for you.

God bless!