August 6: Mark 1:29-34
Key Verse: Mark 1:31
He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.
Devotion:
When Jesus went into the house of Simon and Andrew, Simon's mother-in-law was sick in bed with a fever. Nowadays we haev all manner of medicines to calm fevers and to heal us. Back then, it was your body against the fever... Jesus immediately went to her and took her by the hand and lifted her; the fever leaving her as soon as he did so.
It was then her choice to get up and to server them. Something she may well have been wanting to do ever since she went down with the fever. But now the fever had left her, she was more than willing to get up and server them all. This may sound odd to us in this day and age, but then it would have been common practice. This sort of behaviour has been common practice for many years and it is only through the distortion of ways through political and social pressures that we now think of this as odd.
One of the things we face as modern Christians is trying to get an understanding of the ways of the world back when the words of much of our bible were written. Once get get to understand the ways of people, we get to understand much of what God was trying to do at the time too.
Nowadays God may well reach out to us in ways we would never dream of, such as through computers and the like. But he is constantly trying to get through to us!
Points to ponder:
Do you dismiss things from the Old Testament because they are 'old ways?'
Will you accept God reaching out to you in all new ways?