I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Mark 10-11

In response to the question about divorce, Jesus responded that from the beginning of creation God had made people male and female.  There is so much there about many of the social issues facing our society today.  Further, He said that Moses only gave a commandment allowing divorce as a concession to humanity’s hard hearts.  So, as I read this, many of the problems we have in our society today can be directly traced to our society, and even our Churches, deciding that sometimes divorce is a good thing.  Divorce is never a good thing, but that does not mean that those who have divorced cannot be forgiven.  Divorce is never OK, but sometimes the other options seem worse.  I have two more things to say about divorce.  First, while I believe that those who are married should always seek another option other than divorce, I will not tell others what price they should pay to avoid divorce.  Second, those who are divorced cannot go back and make it so that they did not get divorced, they can only move on from where they are now in the knowledge that God will forgive us our sins.  Certainly, I have failed to be faithful to God to at least as great a degree as anyone else and have no place to consider myself better than those who have gotten divorced.

I really did not intend to spend so much time on Jesus’ comment about human sexuality.  What I really wanted to focus on today was Jesus’ reaction to annoying people.  We have two stories about people who annoyed those around Jesus, the parents who brought their children to see Him, and blind Bartimaeus.  When the parents brought their children to Jesus, the disciples considered the children to be an annoyance and scolded the parents.  When blind Bartimaeus called out to Jesus for healing, the others around Jesus considered him an annoyance and told him to be quiet.  In both cases, the “gatekeepers” thought that Jesus was too important to spend time on those seeking His attention.  Also, in both cases, Jesus was willing to make time for them.  Both of these instances provide an illustration on Jesus’ teaching about leadership.  Neither the children nor Bartimaeus were of “value” to Jesus.  They could bring nothing to Him which made His life better.  Nevertheless, He was willing to make time for them because, by doing so, He could make their life better.