I wonder what fills your typical day. Work? Volunteering? Catching up with friends or family? Minding grandchildren? Housework and preparing meals? I wonder also where God fits into your day. A prayer at the start and end of the day or before meals? An intentional time of reading the Scriptures and meditating on them?

In the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel we are given a glimpse of a typical day for Jesus. It’s fairly breathless activity from morning until evening as Jesus teaches, heals, confronts unclean spirits, heals some more and plans his next move. Somewhere in the busy schedule there must be time for eating and there is definitely a time for prayer and solitude. In other words there is both action and reflection, doing and connecting with God … which is a good model for our lives.

As followers of Jesus, are we called to emulate Jesus’ busy schedule of speaking and healing (and what might this look like in our context)? In this passage from Mark, we are offered both positive and negative examples of what it means to be a disciple. Negatively, we are offered the example of the male disciples who seem to want to organize and bend Jesus to their own program of ministry, which Jesus resists. Positively, we are shown the example of Peter’s mother-in-law who serves and offers hospitality. Our first response may be to dismiss this as first century gender stereotyping. But the same word for serving (diakoneo) is later used by Jesus to summarise his own mission (Mark 10:45). So let us learn to follow Jesus using the gifts and passions we’ve been given, but to do so from a position of loving and serving others.

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