Getting Started, Again

When is the right time to start something really important?

When do you know you are ready, that everything you need to learn has been learned, and everything you need to do the job is at hand?

Does that perfect moment ever come?

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." - Mark 1:14-15

What do you think took Jesus so long to get his ministry started?

By the standards of the day, he was middle aged, the equivalent of a man near retirement age today, someone who had already had a career, which he had.  I guess I can relate to that, having taken the time to listen to God's call once I found myself between jobs, between careers.

In the beginning of Mark's Gospel, we learn that he started preaching after John was arrested, so there was a stimulus or catalyst at work here as well.  Jesus picked up the baton and ran with it, keeping the race alive, helping to grow what John had started.

It might sound strange to talk of Jesus as an inheritor of the ministry we attribute to him, but there may be an important message here.

Jesus described himself as a prophet time and again, wanting the people to hear the words of God through him, whether they saw him as one with God or not.  And most people did not.  Many today do not as well, but that doesn't diminish the value of his preaching, nor does it take away the fact that his message was from God the Father.

If there is anything we can or should all agree on about Jesus, it could be that he was sent by God to bring us salvation from ourselves.

But we can also take away something from this reading about ourselves and our ministries.

Getting started is something we can do now.  We don't have to feel like we are too old or too late or too anything.

When confronted with the right catalyst, a change of management at work, a loss, a birth, a blessed event in our lives, whatever, we can stop and take a look at who we are, where we are and what we do and ask, is this what we were called to do and be?

We just might hear a whisper from the one who created us.

More to come...


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