The CROSSroads: Personal Lessons from Mark's Gospel by Rev. Mitch Schultz

Updated
2001-05-26; 14:34:26utc

Lesson Eight: HEALED TO SERVE (Mark 1:29-34)

"She began to wait on them" (vs.31)

Jesus is not just at work in the Church but also in the home. May we be forgiven for thinking that the Church building and Church hour is the only time we can experience worship and the reality of his presence. When Jesus left the synagogue in Capernaum, we don't have to wait another week and return to the same place to see him work.. Mark tells us that he left the Synagogue and immediately (a favourite word of Mark's) entered the home of Simon Peter and his brother Andrew. There his presence caused just as much a stir and changed as many lives as it did in the sacred rooms of the synagogue. The place of worship only shifted from one venue to the other. Realize in your life of worship that when you leave church each Sunday morning, Jesus goes with you and he is as real and active in the home as he was during that sacred hour of worship.

When Jesus arrives at the home there is little opportunity to rest nor is there a meal waiting for them, for Peter's mother in law, the hostess of the home, is incapacitated by a fever. In the same way the man in the synagogue was unable to worship becomes of the demons in him, Peters mother in law was unable to serve because of her illness. It was a condition that Jesus would not tolerate. The scriptures tell us he came and bore our sickness and infirmities (Matt. 8:17) and during his brief years on earth there were very few he did not reach out to heal. It was a demonstration of his power and proof of his Lordship over the body and creation.

Notice however that when Peter's mother in law in healed she responds by serving. "The fever left her and she began to wait on them." (vs.31) God touched her, restored her, and she responded by serving him.

In God's family there is to be one great body of people: servants. In fact, that's the way to the top in his kingdom. -Charles R. Swindoll