And the person I’m feeling for is Jairus. There’s obviously a terrible urgency – Jairus (a synagogue president!) is on his knees begging in front of this Jesus; he says that his daughter is at the point of death. You can feel the relief in his mind as he’s finally got the Great Healer in tow to bring Jesus home to heal his 12-year-old daughter. Then some silly woman has to go and get herself healed in the middle of all this! AND she’s ritually unclean … AND she shouldn’t be in this crowd … AND she shouldn’t be touching anyone, let alone someone as holy as this Man. And as if that wasn’t enough, Jesus has to stop and have a little chat with her – “OK, OK, she’s healed, for heaven’s sake. Let’s just get going here!”

Then come the messengers. Jairus recognizes them and must have guessed as soon as he saw them what the story was – his daughter was gone. I cannot imagine the grief he must have felt; the anger at that wretched woman for holding up the journey. Life suddenly grows awfully dark for Jairus.

But God has a plan. (No duh! He always has a plan.) And Jesus overhears the bad news (v. 36) and a chink of light burns into the blackness – the Great Healer seems to think there’s still hope. Now in an act of grace, Jesus permits only the four men to continue with Him – Peter, James and John (the inner circle) and Jairus – to Jairus’ house. Somehow the entire crowd was dissipated, and there was sudden quiet.

I wonder what Jesus said to Jairus during that walk? Was there silence? Deep words? We’ll never know. But the light of hope must have grown a little brighter for Jairus, don’t you think?

When they got to the house the mourning was in full force; surely he must have felt sick with grief. If everybody was mourning, all hope had to be gone. Yet Jesus continues, and ejecting all the mourners, goes over to her bed. Three disciples, two parents and one Lord. Still there is a crack of light for Jairus – the Healer has now seen her and hasn’t stopped.

And He doesn’t seem to do anything special. He simply takes her hand and says, “Up you get.” And she did! Poor old Jairus! How could he handle the shattering of all that darkness? Light detonated around him – life would never be the same. All his preconceived notions of how the world worked were blown away. I’m guessing that, although his daughter got up and began walking, Jairus needed to have a bit of a lie-down!

I find it so easy to see the darkness moving in, just like I imagine Jairus did. The busyness, the inclinations and the beliefs of the world – like Jairus’ crowd, woman and mourners – all get in the way of the light for me too. Sometimes I’m holding on to the sure Truth of the Gospel for myself (by my fingernails, it seems) because there are times in my life when problems are presented to me, I think, solely in order to show me that God is active.

Of all the things I think of when I read chapter 1 of Mark’s Gospel, I think that the idea of timing hits me most solidly.

First the promise of 2,000 years has suddenly come to pass, and who was ready for it? As a nation it had looked forward to this time since its infancy in Goshen, Egypt – as the patriarchs did before that – but it has been so long that expectancy had become the habit and realization just couldn’t take hold.

Then comes John the Baptist to ‘Prepare the way of the Lord’ – but very few are awake to hear his song in the Jordan Valley. He must have had some impact though: God never sends someone to do pointless things.

But most of all, he is there for the Christ – to make sure that the prophecies are completed:

• Mark 1:4 “John appeared…” (to fulfill Malachi 3:1 and Isaiah 40:3-4)
• Mark 1:9 “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee” (a prophecy referenced in Matt 2:23 that seems to refer back to something Isaiah references in Isaiah 11:1)
• Mark 1:15 “and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.’

Secondly I’m struck by the immediacy of response throughout the chapter. Look at all these verses:

For all that few are awake to respond to the Christ, He Himself is in the center of a whirlpool of activity. Every few minutes some new event seems to be triggered; there is a sense of intense and irresistible urgency; once the Christ has appeared, there is no stopping the forward momentum.