2.13.24 - Mark 4:1
How can Jesus' experience of the need for boundaries and accommodations empower you to honor your own unique needs? What creative solutions can you think up to balance your needs and communal ones?
Again, Jesus began to teach beside the lake. Such a massive crowd gathered that he climbed into a boat there on the lake. He sat in the boat while the whole crowd was nearby on the shore.
Mark’s Gospel frequently shows Jesus to be sensitive to touch.
As an Autistic person for whom physical contact can be quite literally painful, I am encouraged by how, when crowds press in — teeming with reaching hands, loud with pleas for healing — Jesus doesn’t give in to the pressure to sacrifice his own needs for theirs; he finds ways to honor both.
At extreme moments, that looks like leaving the crowd behind entirely, like in Matthew 14:13. More often, Jesus prioritizes the people’s needs all day, then tends to himself in night’s stillness (e.g. Mark 1:35).
Other times, like here, he finds creative ways to serve the crowds and himself at the same time!
With the boat as an accommodation, the shoreline as a boundary, Jesus can teach all day without being exhausted — and even has energy left over for deeper conversation with his closest friends.
How can the knowledge that, in Jesus, God experienced the need for boundaries and accommodations empower you to honor your own unique needs? What creative solutions can you think up to balance your needs and communal ones?
-- Avery Arden
For me, a healthy relationship requires us to speak a kind of truth coupled with kindness that helps people understand and act on what's important to us. If we can't articulate what it is we need or want, how can others be expected to honor it.