Naked

A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus.  When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind.  Mark 14:51-52

These are an odd couple of verses.  No other gospel has anything like this, which has led many scholars to speculate that Mark was writing about himself.  If this had happened to you, would you write it down in the most important document you wrote in your entire life?  Perhaps Mark did, it really does sound like an eye witness account, something that you would not make up.

I remember years ago hearing someone say how the incident in this garden that night is much like the incident in the first garden with Adam and Eve.  When sin gets a hold on us we often run away from the presence of God scared and naked ending up ashamed and defeated.

There is a laying bare of our human weaknesses in the first garden and in the garden of Gethsemane.
 After both those incidents, the mercy of God comes looking for us to clothe us and give us a new way to live. What Jesus did in his garden undid what we (humans) did in the first garden.  Where we failed and brought sin and death, he overcame and brought victory and eternal life. 

When I am following Jesus and fear grips me and I run, I now have a place and a person to come back to, in fact, he comes looking for me.  Is he looking for you too?

For the journey...

Tim