[Propertalk] Gospel - Quotes for 9/20, Mark 9:30-37, Part 6

[Joe Parrish]

In setting the child before the disciples as an example, Jesus also puts his arms around it - holding it close - and honouring it. For a time, as he predicted, his arms will be held fast - but in that dying, his arms become open to all who yearn for love and those for whom the arms of Jesus rank higher than any earthly throne.

http://www.wellsprings.org.uk/weekly_wellsprings/year_b/sunday_25.htm

Catherine McElhinney and Kathryn Turner
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We can use resources, like those Harris reviews in Caring for Children in Crisis, to prepare ministries for children who suffer the loss of their family in divorce, endure sexual abuse, or face death. She reminds us to arrange our ministry to include the entire family, and even pastors and professional caregivers.  Taking seriously the grief that children experience is an important first step.  "Adults may assume that the young person's grief experience will be brief and have no long-term consequences," McClintock explains. "A well-meaning grown-up may even attempt to expedite the 'rebound' by engaging the child in cheerful activities. A far more helpful response would be to guide children in developing healthy patterns of grieving."  

http://www.baylor.edu/christianethics/Childrenstudyguide5.pdf

Robert B. Kruschwitz
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Curiosity about the physical world is another childhood trait that we should nourish. "Among the many holy tasks of Christians is to foster, nurture, and develop children's God-given sense of curiosity in such a way that it will still be there when they are adults," writes Scott Hoezee. "For this whole world belongs to God-we should want to know more about it." Are we nourishing this inquisitiveness at church, or stifling it with opaque windows, lessons, and songs that ignore or diminish curiosity about the natural world? "It's easy to grow up," he observes, "thinking that there's little connection between a Thursday afternoon field trip when you tramp through a wetland and a Sunday morning in church."  

http://www.baylor.edu/christianethics/CreationStudyGuide6.pdf

Robert B. Kruschwitz
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Sometimes we think we can't be pushed any harder or stretched anymore.  Admittedly, there are some Christians that think they shouldn't be pushed at all.  Yet, look at these twelve men, known only for their normalcy prior to their call from Jesus.  Look how hard Jesus pushed them; beyond their livelihood, out of their homes, at odds with their faith and even their own families.  Jesus pushed until they reached a point where they had nothing else and no one else.  Until the only words they had left were; "Lord, to whom shall we go?" [John 6:68b]
It is critical to our growth that we are pushed and stretched beyond our comfortable surroundings.  We don't like being pushed that hard; in fact we often reject it.  We don't want to visit the sick, the alien, the incarcerated, or the poor.  Yet, to reach heaven, Jesus says that this is exactly what we must do [Mt 25:41-44].  If we don't let go of the comforts of this world we will be very uncomfortable in the next, for it will be filled with the very people that this world rejects [Luke 16:19-31].
So Jesus pushed hard, but it hardened his follower's resiliency without breaking their spirits.  Later, they would need every ounce of that courage to walk the road ahead of them.

http://onefamilyoutreach.com/bible/Mark/mk_09_30_37.html

Jerry Goebel: 2005 © http://onefamilyoutreach.com
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The way of the cross is no less confounding or frightening today. Because of this, It is fashionable in some circles to speak of Christianity as a set of skills that one learns to practice, the way one learns the skills necessary to be a woodworker or a research chemist. New pastors are advised to find the masters of Christianity in their parish and apprentice themselves to these giants of Christian practice. And if we are going to apprentice ourselves to a master, we must learn who is the greatest.
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This gospel text's bumper sticker might be, "Start seeing the invisible." Start seeing the invisible, not because it is virtuous to do so, not so that we can congratulate ourselves on being the greatest at seeing. Start seeing the invisible because to receive the invisible one is to receive Jesus, and to receive Jesus is to receive the one who sent him.

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2896

Mary E. Hinkle 
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In the ancient world, however, abandonment of infants was a normal practice, a postnatal method of birth control, and no particular stigma was attached to it. Oedipus is perhaps the most famous example -- the heir to the throne of Thebes was exposed to the elements as a newborn because of the terrible prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother. Infants might be abandoned for a number of reasons, including illegitimacy, but usually they were simply the offspring of parents who lacked the resources to feed them.
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Menachem Schneerson, the famous Lubavitcher rabbi from Brooklyn, used to stand every week for hours as thousands of people filed by to receive his blessing or his advice about matters great and small. Once someone asked him how he, who was in his 80s, could stand for so long without seeming to get tired. The rabbi replied, "When you're counting diamonds you don't get tired."
The abandoned baby on the street, the stranger at the door, even our own husband or wife or child, is a diamond, and in receiving and treasuring these diamonds we are receiving the "pearl of great price" that was once hidden on earth as a destitute child of uncertain parentage.

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1995

Joel Marcus, 2000
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