286+ articles · Verse by verse
Articles.
Long-form study. Plain English.
Every article does the hard work — what the words meant to the first readers, the historical context, the first-century background — then hands it to you in words you already know.
286 articles · page 3 of 12
Mark 1:12–13 — The Temptation of Jesus
The Spirit does not lead Jesus into the wilderness, Mark says it drove Him. Forty days, no food, wild beasts, and a body at its limit.
Mark 1:9–11 — The Baptism of Jesus
Jesus walks out of a town people used as a punchline and into the Jordan. Luke says all the people were being baptised, which means there were witnesses.
Mark 4:1–9 — The Parable of the Sower
Wayside, stony ground, thorns, good soil. The most familiar parable in the Gospels, heard the way the crowd on that shoreline would have heard it.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 27: Love Yourself
Step twenty-seven: love yourself. The irony is that we are not short on self-love, we are drowning in it, and still looking outward for the problem.
Mark 4 — From Miracles to Parables
Up to here Mark has been all action: healings, exorcisms, rising opposition. Now the story turns and Jesus starts to teach in parables. Why that matters.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 26: Play the Victim
Step twenty-six: play the victim. Carry a laminated victim card into every conversation, and nothing is ever yours to own or to fix.
Mark 4:10–12 — Why Parables?
Why would Jesus teach in a way that hides as much as it reveals? His answer to the twelve is harder than most of us would like it to be.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 25: Have Double Standards
Step twenty-five: keep a double standard. Culture insists it is only physical, so why does a casual fling end up feeling like a funeral?
Mark 3:22–27 — How Can Satan Cast Out Satan?
The scribes came down from Jerusalem with a verdict ready: He has Beelzebub. Jesus answers with a question that takes their logic apart.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 24: Follow Other's Convictions
Step twenty-four: adopt everyone else's convictions. Borrowed rules never stick, and when they fall off, the shame arrives right on schedule.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 23: Rescue People
Step twenty-three: rescue people. Jump in after them, skip the life jacket, and quietly enjoy how necessary it makes you feel.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 22: Spiral
Step twenty-two: spiral. One correction at work and by two in the afternoon you are browsing job listings and pricing out a whole new life.
Mark 3:20–21 — When Family Thinks You've Lost Your Mind
Only Mark preserves the raw line. His own family came to take hold of Him, saying, “He is out of His mind.”
How to Have a Bad Day Step 21: Pick a Side and Draw Your Sword
Step twenty-one: pick a side and draw your sword. No nuance, no conversation, no wrestling with truth. Just divide, dismiss, and unfriend.
Mark 3:13–19 — The New Sinai
Jesus climbs a mountain and calls out twelve names. This is not team-building. Mark wants you thinking about Sinai, and about twelve tribes.
Mark 3:1–6 — Stretch Out Your Hand
A man with a withered hand, and a room full of people watching to see whether Jesus will break the Sabbath. He looks around at them in anger, and heals him anyway.
Mark 2:18–22 — The Bridegroom, the Fast, and the Wineskins
New wine bursts old wineskins. Jesus is not patching up the religion of His day, and He says so with two images nobody in that crowd could misunderstand.
Mark 3:6–13 — The Nations at the Shore
They came from Galilee, Judea, Idumea, Tyre and Sidon. Mark lists the regions deliberately, and the list is already reaching past Israel.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 20: Live Like There's No Tomorrow
Step twenty: live like there is no tomorrow. Every decade I have lived through came with its own apocalypse, and here we still are.
Mark 2:13–17 — The Call No One Saw Coming
Jesus calls a tax collector, then eats dinner at his house with his friends. Of all the scandals in Mark, this is the one the religious leaders could not stomach.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 19: Resent Aging Pt. 2
Step eighteen continued: marriage in midlife is one person under three blankets while the other stands in front of an open freezer. Part two.
Mark 2:1–12 — Breaking Through the Roof
Four friends could not get through the door, so they dug through the roof. Jesus looks at the man on the mat and forgives him, which was not what anyone came for.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 18: Resent Aging Pt. 1
Step eighteen: resent aging. Birthdays hit differently now, and nobody prepares you for what midlife actually asks of a body. Part one.
Mark 1:40–45 — When Clean Hands Touch the Cursed
Cut off from family, banished from worship, shouting “unclean” with every breath. Then Jesus does the one thing nobody does to a leper. He touches him.