GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
MARK 1:15
Near but not complete.
“Near” is not the same as “complete.” One of the first companies I worked for made concrete blocks and sold ready-mix concrete, with a fleet of fifteen concrete mixer trucks. The owner planned to build a machine to separate aggregates for use in making concrete blocks. Other employees and I began constructing the machinery: loading hopper, elevator, rotating screen, and separate aggregate bins. After several months, the owner turned his attention to other matters, and the partially completed machine sat, incomplete, for years—near, but unfinished.
In 1970, Apollo 13 suffered a malfunction in the service module on the way to the moon, and the mission was aborted. The crew’s ingenuity made it possible for them to return safely to Earth—near the moon, but not complete.
According to St. Mark, Jesus began his ministry in Galilee. “And saying, ‘The time has been fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has drawn near. Repent and believe in the good news.’” (1:15) The Kingdom of God had drawn near, Jesus said, but could not be entered without repentance and belief. The word Mark used for repent was, a compound word meaning“change” and “mind,” an imperative. But simply changing the mind without faith becomes despair, and faith without repentance—or changing the mind—is presumption. So Jesus told his audiences that the Kingdom of God was near, but not complete, not accessible, without changing the mind and acting in faith, which one writer described as accepting the truth value of the proposition—in this instance “the gospel”—and modifying one’s thoughts and behaviors accordingly.
The Kingdom of God was near, Jesus said, but not fully realized without repentance and belief, and that’s still the good news—the Kingdom of God is near.
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