Mark 9: Highs and Lows

Mark 9 is a study in contrast from the ascent on a high mountain to experience the Transfiguration to the descent that brings Jesus face to face with a deaf and mute spirit.

What do you think about the Transfiguration?  Certainly, it is a very mysterious episode in the life of Jesus.  A number of intriguing elements occur:

• Jesus is transfigured: changed in physical appearance, somehow, so that He glows with a dazzling brightness. (I love the telling eyewitness detail about His clothes becoming "whiter than anyone on earth could bleach them!")
• A meeting with Elijah and Moses.
• A cloud that envelops them.
• The Father's voice from the cloud which says, "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to Him!"

The Transfiguration seems to be a time of empowering and strengthening for Jesus as He begins the next leg of His journey that will lead to His crucifixion in Jerusalem.  Just as His baptism and time in the wilderness spiritually prepared Him for His season of public ministry, this time spent on the mountaintop equips Him for what is to come.

But, as is so often true in the Christian life, highs are followed by lows.  Instead of taking Peter's suggestion to abide on the mountain in a dwelling, permanently ensconced there like some enlightened guru, Jesus knows that His destiny isn't on this mountaintop, but on Calvary.  And to get there, He has to go through some valleys.

Descending from the mountain, Jesus meets up with the rest of His disciples and sees an agitated crowd gathered around a desperate man with his demon-possessed son.  This demon has been resistant to an exorcism previously attempted by Jesus' disciples.  Now the man wonders if Jesus can do anything for his boy.

What follows is a conversation tinged with emotion and truth.  When Jesus challenges the man, saying, "What do you mean 'if?' Everything is possible for him who believes," the man soul-searchingly replies, "I do believe; help my unbelief!"

Isn't that the cry of every Christian heart?  An intent seeking after God in faith, all the while still needing help for our moments and thoughts of faithlessness?  I take great comfort in the fact that such a reply was satisfactory to Jesus, and that He did, then, do just as the man needed and freed his son from a terrible spiritual power.

Jesus is the One you need for your highs AND lows in life!