GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 9:26
Change Is Difficult
Alice noticed a spot on one of her jackets. She tried every cleaning product she had to remove it, but it wouldn’t yield to her efforts. The spot was stubborn. Finally, she applied a powerful spot remover, washed the jacket, and the stain disappeared.
We are all creatures of habit, most of them good, but occasionally there is one that should be eliminated. Someone once described a habit as a carved neural path—essentially the way the brain is wired, though the metaphor is imperfect. To change a habit, one must rewire the brain—a task far from easy. I have a history of kidney stones, and the urologist advised me to stop drinking tea because it contains a lot of oxalate, one of the main contributors to my particular type of stones. I used to drink tea in the morning, with meals, and in the evening. However, the agony of kidney stones convinced me to give up the habit of drinking tea. I missed the comfort of a warm, delicious cup of tea. I had to rewire my brain to something else—coffee. Yuck. I had never drunk coffee before. Slowly and reluctantly, after several days—or perhaps even months—I rewired my brain and began drinking the black brew. Now, I have a new habit.
The stubborn spot and my struggle to change the tea habit came back to mind as I studied Jesus’ confrontation with the evil spirit possessing the young boy in Mark’s account. “But Jesus, seeing the crowd rushing together toward them, rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, ‘Mute and deaf spirit, I command you: come out of him and never enter him again.’ And crying out and convulsing him much, it came out. And the boy became as if dead, so that many said, ‘He is dead.’” (Mark 9:25-26)
Similar to the spot in the coat and the tea habit, the evil spirit did not go easily; it convulsed and wracked the boy’s body until he appeared to have died. Yet the spot, the tea habit, and the evil spirit all yield to a greater power. One lesson: Reform or change is often difficult, but never underestimate the commanding voice of the Lord.
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