I was reading Mark 4 whilst consuming an Italian hoagie for lunch and came across another one of my oversights...this one has been for 29 years! It's the story of Jesus calming the Sea of Galilee that is also told in Matthew 8 and Luke 8. The only difference is that Mark 4:36 says, "And leaving the multitude, they took Him along with them, just as He was, in the boat; and other boats were with Him." This is the first time it ever registered with me that there were other boats following the one Jesus and the disciples sailed!! So here we have the disciples in a boat with Jesus and a bunch of tag-alongs getting caught in the very same storm that scared the disciples enough that they thought they were perishing and called Jesus to help...smart move on their part, even if they were trepidatious!!Now...just exactly HOW did the tag-alongs act and react to storm/no storm conditions? Were they close enough to hear Jesus rebuke the storm and calm the sea? Would he have used a deep, loud Cecil B. DeMille type "God Voice" to get the job done?!! (For that matter, was Jesus a tenor or bass?) Did any of them have the same awed reaction to His majesty as the disciples?
Now here's oversight #2 about this section of Mark...After they landed, Jesus had to deal with the demon possessed man who lived in the tombs near Gerasene and was uncontrollable, so He cast out the evil spirit, healed the guy, and sent him off to Decapolis as a Gentile (presumably) evangelist! Here we have the mountain-top-experience-to-demon-valley deal of Matthew 17 in a watery frame of reference! (Also what I call the Elijah Principle where he whupped up on 450 Baal prophets only to beat a hasty retreat from one woman named Jezebel in I Kings 18.) Here we have another illustration of what I've observed to be a normal pattern in Christians' lives...a glorious experience followed shortly by a bummer of demonic proportions!!
Well, to quote myself: "Step into the eye of the storm...get outta the wind!"
Got spiritual rain coat and umbrella?
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