The Gospel of Mark (1)

I've been focused on the Gospel of Mark for a long time now. I desire to ingest this book until it comes seeping out my pores, but I ain't there yet. [And by the way, eating Scripture is not only Ezekiel-like, and also Jeremiah-like, but it's Eugene Peterson-like as well.] Anyway, I've long thought that, once I do get this blog going with once-weekly posts, the Gospel of Mark would provide a lot of the blogging stimulus.

The main point for me has been to see the gospel in the Gospel of Mark. Mostly I've avoided, for now, the reading of commentaries or even study bible footnotes, but recently I picked up N. T. Wright's Mark for Everyone. In his first entry, commenting on the opening verses of Mark, Wright says this:

The main thing Mark gets us to do in this opening passage is to sense the shock of the new thing God was doing. If you're sick, and unable to sleep much, sometimes the night seems to go on for ever. But then, just when you're dozing a bit, suddenly the alarm clock goes off: it really is morning. That's the mood here. It raises the question for us too: where are we asleep today, in our churches, our communities, our personal lives? What might it take to wake us up?

Worthy questions with which to begin.