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 14-16

Today’s passage starts out with Mark’s account of the woman who anointed Jesus.  Each Gospel contains such an account, but there are differences between them.  Perhaps there were two such events, or perhaps people remembered the details differently (and if there were two such events, people may have mixed up details between the two events).  However, the fact that all four Gospels contain such a story with a similar emphasis in what Jesus says about it tells is that this story contains an important message.  It seems to me that Jesus tells us here that there is a place for spending our resources on luxuries.  While we should make strong efforts to help those in greater need than ourselves, it is not only not wrong to spend some of our resources on making others feel better, we should do so from time to time.

There other part of this passage that I want to write about today is Peter’s denial of Jesus.  When Jesus predicted that all of His disciples would desert Him, Peter vehemently denied that he would ever do such a thing.  Peter insisted that he would stand by Jesus’ side even if everyone else abandoned Him.  Despite his best intentions, when push came to shove, Peter was unable to keep his promise.  One important lesson here is that we can never know how we will hold up under pressure until we experience that pressure.  However, even though Peter failed to hold up this time, we also know that later he did stand up for Jesus in the face of persecution.  I want to note also that Peter did not deny Jesus just once or twice.  He had three opportunities to stand by Jesus’ side in Jesus’ darkest hour and could not do so.  We will also sometimes fail Christ when the chips are down, but we need to repent of our failure and accept God’s forgiveness.  Our failures to stand up for God do not mean that we are forever damned.