Launch Your Rocket

A Series on Lent
 (Use the link below to read the verses.)
Mark 5:1-20

[Lent gives us an opportunity to step back and pause to recognize our humanity and sinful nature. The Lenten season reminds us of our need for a Savior as a time to reflect and repent for our shortcomings. It is an opportunity to recognize the human condition we may spend the rest of the year running from and bring our need for a Savior to the forefront. Lent prepares us as we approach Good Friday and Easter with thanksgiving for the grace and mercy shown to us.]

  

Rocket Watts is a great name for an athlete. There actually is a Michigan State basketball player by that name. He’s a sophomore guard, and was expected to have a breakout season this year. Instead, he has struggled… until the most recent game against arch-rival Michigan.

 

To understand what happened, you need to go back to the game just before that which, in this COVID crazy season, was also against Michigan. At the beginning of the second half there was a loose ball. The star center for Michigan dove to the court to get it… while Rocket watched. Immediately after that, Coach Izzo yanked Rocket from the game, not to return.

 

Apparently, that got Rocket’s attention because when he got into the very next Michigan game, he played his best of the season. It was as if he had flipped a switch; the difference between the two games was night and day. Rocket had finally launched.

 

The story from Mark 5 has a somewhat similar storyline in it.

 

² When Jesus climbed out of the boat, a man possessed by an evil spirit came out from the tombs to meet him. ³ This man lived in the burial caves and could no longer be restrained, even with a chain. ⁴ Whenever he was put into chains and shackles—as he often was—he snapped the chains from his wrists and smashed the shackles. No one was strong enough to subdue him. ⁵ Day and night he wandered among the burial caves and in the hills, howling and cutting himself with sharp stones.          NLT

 

In this story, the demon possessed man interacted with Jesus resulting in a change that could be described in the same terms as Rocket’s; it was as if he had flipped a switch; the difference was night and day.

 

¹⁴ The herdsmen fled to the nearby town and the surrounding countryside, spreading the news as they ran. People rushed out to see what had happened. ¹⁵ A crowd soon gathered around Jesus, and they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons. He was sitting there fully clothed and perfectly sane, and they were all afraid.        NLT

 

Most of us don’t have this kind of a dramatic, life-changing experience when we come to faith in Christ. It tends to be more of a gradual change where we become more like Christ one small step at a time.

     

The tradition of Lent is to give up something that is meaningful to us. The idea being that we will better understand the love and grace of Jesus. What if we looked at it from a slightly different perspective?

 

What if we pursued giving up one thing permanently that would help us to become more like Christ? What if we asked the Spirit to show us some character trait or behavior or attitude that needs to be changed? And then asked him to help us change it?

 

Do you think you might flip a switch? Would you launch your rocket?