How Do You Live?

As a society, we are pathetically soft. Even the "most durable" of us are pretty pampered. We have our can't-do-without shampoo and our climate-controlled office buildings. We lose our minds when a detour forces us to add minutes to a commute. We want to know every detail and ensure they are written in stone before we embark on vacation. We have calendars and alarms to keep our days comfortably aligned, and we hide the dirty little secret of our overflow in storage units conveniently located in every town. 

In Mark 6:7-11a, Jesus sends His disciples out with very limited instructions and few customary resources. 

And He called the twelve to Himself, and began to send them out two by two, and gave them power over unclean spirits. He commanded them to take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bag, no bread, no copper in their money belts— but to wear sandals, and not to put on two tunics. Also He said to them, “In whatever place you enter a house, stay there till you depart from that place. And whoever will not receive you nor hear you, when you depart from there, shake off the dust under your feet as a testimony against them."

We're not told if Jesus told them how far to go or how long to stay. It appears He did not. And we are not told how far or how long they actually did go. The fact they were told to take a walking stick, seems to indicate it wasn't a quick trip to the next town over and there could very likely be a predator or two they'd have to knock over the head. No GPS, no debit card, no transit pass, not even a hotel reservation. Mark simply tells us, one day Jesus whistled or waved for His disciples to come to Him and then sent them out. Maybe they came to Him thinking it was time for group prayer and some lunch. Nevertheless, they complied with Jesus' commission and based on Mark's description of their return (verse 30), they had great success. 

I started to wonder if I would be willing to take that trip. How many of us wouldn't ask if there would be WIFI or if we could postpone the trip until our children are back in school? Would friends gather for some sort of intervention to keep us from doing something so impulsive, so reckless? Then I imagined coming face to face with John the Baptist, who set up his ministry in the wilderness with nothing more than one simple camel skin suit and a diet of honey and grasshoppers. Who, in his final days, sat alone in a prison wondering if he'd gotten it wrong, and was eventually beheaded for speaking truth. Or Jeremiah, the "weeping prophet," an empath who was refused the comfort and companionship of a wife, suffered rejection, humiliation, physical pain, and imprisonment, and saw his beloved Jerusalem decimated by heartless Babylonians. 

How did you die? someone might ask them.

Martyred. How did you die? they might ask in return, looking at me.

Crossing against the light while scrolling Instagram.

We are pathetically soft. If we want to go to our death with the full confidence we have carried our cross daily, been poured out, used up, done all we could for the Kingdom of God, the question we need to ask ourselves now is, How do I live? Do I live sacrificially, against the status quo, for God alone. Am I living in imitation of Jesus and those others who laid down their lives for the brethren in His name? Or do I merely exist from paycheck to paycheck, on a quiet cul-de-sac, with neighbors who insist on overhanging my driveway, weary with purposelessness and seeking all I can for myself? Can you imagine explaining the asperity of that sort of suffering to The Apostle Paul?

Photo courtesy LuAnn Martin