Take Nothing

and he charged them that they should take nothing for their journey, save a staff only; no bread, no wallet, now money in their purse; Mark 6:8 (ASV)

Jesus was sending out His friends to spread the good news.  The teacher taught many important lessons not merely by keeping them close to His side, but by sending them off on their own sometimes.  Although we may tend to focus on the practical and logical sense in this method of teaching, unless we are careful we may miss important significant facts.

With only a small bit of information, one may share some new information and help another person understand it.  In this method both receive a far better understanding and control of whatever we are learning.  But as usual, God works on many deeper levels, all at the same time.

One might like to think that the Lord´s intention was to spread the Word to as many people as possible.  This is a common concern but often He is trying to reach you and me.  Many times we try to pass the buck and to make instruction for others who may know less about Godly issues or appear to have a lower understanding than we do.  We hear an important teaching of Jesus but because we have heard it a million times, prayed over it and dealt with it personally at some former point in time, we secretly think that the weight of its message now falls on someone else.  We are free to concern ourselves with more pleasing topics.  In actual fact, the same lesson may need to be learned over and over or repeatedly refreshed to work within our hearts any true healing.

Those men were sent out with nothing.  They had a job to do, there were expenses that were to be incurred.  They would need a lot of things for their journey, but they were explicitly told not to prepare for any of that.  It might be comfortable for us to look at the story and say that was a great lesson for them.  But how many of us would be willing to walk out the door on a journey or mission at this very moment without considering how we are going to pull it off or what we will need to take.  For sure we would at least grab our wallet or stuff some cash in our pockets.

We might only see this passing world but God is here.  There is no step we take, no matter how small that He did not foresee and permit us to take.  Nothing has escaped His planning or slipped from His control.  The child, who in faith walks in the realization of this, is the one who pleases His father.  If we choose to reject the thought and think that is really us who prepared well or reacted well in situations, we are living a lie and deceiving ourselves.

Dear Lord, when will we learn that You are in control?  When will we step out on those feeble legs of faith and realize that it is not the money or the things we will need that will keep us afloat.  When will our eyes be opened so that we can see that our current reality is not the definitive one? When will we see that the worldly scenes we see are actually a spiritual scene being played out?  When will we realize that all things come from You and that to place our faith in the money we have, the understanding or anything else, is removing our faith from You.  Please give us the strength to set off today on a journey of faith.  Let us see clearly that You provide what we really need in every situation.  Let us never pass the lesson off to another, but to sense the weight and personal attention You are placing upon our relation to You right now.  Let us take nothing, accept You.

Amen