How do we discern God's voice?  We need time; we need Scripture; we need community; and we need confirmation.

Of course, the cross settles issues of forgiveness and redemption for us.  However, perhaps more than this, the cross saves us from our self-delusions.

For Mark, Jesus became most thoroughly human in these events at the end of His life.

Peter learned, as we must, that loyalty to Jesus is loyalty to God and to His chosen ones.

Of course, we struggle with the 'already-not yet' because from our perspective Jesus couldn't be enthroned already.  I mean, if He is, look at the state of the world.  But, the Gospels may help us to understand why a world in which Jesus is presently reigning in the heavens might look as this one does...

Jesus demonstrates for us that submission to God is more important than surviving.

Would you join me in remembering the price paid for us—the blood of our Lord—and in asking Him to return today?

A discerning person keeps wisdom in view, but a fool’s eyes wander to the ends of the earth (Proverbs 17:24).

Like a broken tooth or a lame foot is reliance on the unfaithful in a time of trouble (Proverbs 25:19).

Mark presents the Jewish leaders as wanting Jesus dead because of His weak stances on the Sabbath and on ritual purity, and Mark presents now one of Jesus' own followers willing to betray him to death because of his failure to sacrifice all for the poor and the vulnerable.