Job 7:1-4, 6-7 / 1 Cor 9:16-19, 22-23 / Mark 1:29-39
One of the favourite Singaporean pastimes, besides eating, is shopping. Especially after indulging in delicious food, the next thing to do is to have a little exercise and go window shopping at the malls or shopping centres.
But the style of shopping has also evolved over the years especially over the past one year.
From window shopping in the brick-and-mortar stores, we have gone to online shopping out of curiosity, but now it is online shopping out of necessity.
With safety measures and restrictions, online shopping has become a pastime and also a new norm.
And with that comes the rise in prominence in the profession of delivery service, or for ease of speech, we call them the “delivery man”.
From the time we place the order for an item online, we will have to wait, expectantly and even eagerly, for the delivery man to come.
And when he calls and arrives with our items, we will be happy that the waiting is over. And we will be even happier if what we ordered is exactly what we received, otherwise this refund and exchange hassle can be quite troublesome and time-consuming.
Well, in the past we will go to the store and get what we want and can get it almost immediately, but now we place an order online and then we have to wait for the delivery man to come with the goods.
So we should be thankful for those delivery service providers, or also known as “delivery man” and it would be good to compliment them when we see them.
In the gospel, we could see that Jesus had a pretty busy day. From Simon’s mother-in-law, to those who came to Him in the evening, Jesus was doing some kind of delivery, well actually, He was doing deliverance.
Jesus came to deliver the Good News of Salvation, and for those who were longing to be delivered from illness or sicknesses, from physical or spiritual torment, they saw in Jesus the one they were waiting and longing for.
In the gospel, besides all that wondrous healing and deliverance from evil spirits, there is also the quiet moment of prayer for Jesus.
And when His disciples looked around for Him and found Him and told Him that everyone was looking for Him, Jesus had this to say:
Let us go elsewhere, to the neighbouring country towns, so that I can preach there too, because that is why I came.
That was a profound statement of His mission. Jesus came to deliver the Good News of Salvation, and that was expressed in His ministry of deliverance from physical and spiritual torment and distress.
But we must realize that we need Jesus to be our Saviour and to deliver us from our sins, just like we need the delivery man to deliver the items to us.
We must realize and acknowledge that we cannot save ourselves, or heal ourselves, or protect ourselves from evil and danger.
We need Jesus to be our Saviour, our Healer and our Protector.
What we cannot do for ourselves, Jesus will do for us because that is why He came.
Let us end off with a prayer for deliverance from the “nots” in our lives. We must believe that what we cannot do for ourselves, Jesus will do for us.
Dear Jesus,
Please untie the knots in my mind,
my heart and my life.
Remove the have nots, the can nots, and the do nots that I have in my mind.
Erase the will nots, may nots, might nots that may find a home in my heart.
Release me from the could nots, would nots and should nots that obstruct my life.
And most of all, dear Jesus, I ask that You remove from my mind, my heart and my life all of the “am nots” that I have allowed to hold me back, especially the thought that
I am not good enough. Amen.
Yes, what we cannot do for ourselves, Jesus will do for us, because that is why He came.