I’ve been looking at Mark chapter 9.  The first verse says, “I assure you that some of you standing here right now will not die before you see the Kingdom of God arrive in great power.”  Verse 9 says, “As they descended from the mountainside, he told them not to tell anyone what they had seen until he, the Son of Man, has risen from the dead.”  Sandwiched in between these verse of course is the Transfiguration.  In verse 31 Jesus says, “The Son of Man is going to be betrayed.  he will be killed, but 3 days later he will rise from the dead.”   They didn’t get it and was afraid to ask.  But they weren’t afraid to discuss who was the greatest.  I see in this chapter Jesus staying focused upon the will of God.  Even in the greatest of experiences Jesus humbled himself to the experiences he would go through on the cross.  When was the last time we were on a spiritial mountain and immediately humbled yourself?

I was reading Mark 9:22-26 and I found a puzzling action on the part of Jesus.  Jesus was in Bethsaida and a blind man was brought to him.  Jesus took the blind man outside of Bethsaida and healed him.  Jesus then told the man this, “Do not even enter the village.”  I was wondering why Jesus would take him outside of town and heal him and then tell him not to even go in the town.  I then found Matthew 11:21.  The verse reads: “Woe to you Chorazin! Woe to you Bethsaida! For if the miracles had occured in Tyre and Sidon which occured in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.”  I suspect the next verses after the account of healing the man was because Jesus was thinking of Bethsaida.  Jesus asks his disciples this question:  “Who do people say that I am?”  Are miracles happening in your town?  Why not?  Who do you say in Jesus?