"Paul thought it not good to take Mark with them, who departed from them from Pamphylia - Acts15:38.
Paul rejected Mark. God had not rejected him. Fundamentally Paul was right, if wrong in his sharpness. And Mark was wrong. In Christ for all that, failure is not final.
The harsh appraisal of men, even of good men, is not always that of God. He does not quench the smoking flax. Mark failed because he was in the wrong place. Qualities, wrongly deployed become defects. Paul once likened the Church to a body complete with limbs and organs. Hand cannot function as foot, nor heart do the work of the lungs.
Tension invades the community of Christ when folks try incongruously to function in ways for which they have no aptitude or calling. In a healthy body each member performs harmoniously its alloted task. So with the body of Christ.
Each must do his proper work, or become a liability. Mark was impulsive, hasty, perhaps too vehement. Those very qualities were to make him successful in the real task which awaited him, the writing of his terse brief Gospel.
When Paul wrote of the body of Christ in chapter twelve of his first letter to Corinth, perhaps he thought of Mark. His hasty dismissal of one much like himself, and of the events which followed which restored their fellowship.
Paul rejected Mark. God had not rejected him. Fundamentally Paul was right, if wrong in his sharpness. And Mark was wrong. In Christ for all that, failure is not final.
The harsh appraisal of men, even of good men, is not always that of God. He does not quench the smoking flax. Mark failed because he was in the wrong place. Qualities, wrongly deployed become defects. Paul once likened the Church to a body complete with limbs and organs. Hand cannot function as foot, nor heart do the work of the lungs.
Tension invades the community of Christ when folks try incongruously to function in ways for which they have no aptitude or calling. In a healthy body each member performs harmoniously its alloted task. So with the body of Christ.
Each must do his proper work, or become a liability. Mark was impulsive, hasty, perhaps too vehement. Those very qualities were to make him successful in the real task which awaited him, the writing of his terse brief Gospel.
When Paul wrote of the body of Christ in chapter twelve of his first letter to Corinth, perhaps he thought of Mark. His hasty dismissal of one much like himself, and of the events which followed which restored their fellowship.
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