Questions about Fasting

Mark For Everyone

MARK 2.18–22
Questions about Fasting...

...When I was a boy there was a craze for ginger-beer plants. An uncle gave us the starter kit, including the bacteria that, by a process I never understood, produced the secret ingredient that gave the homemade brew its fizz and taste. The problem was that the stuff was so powerful, despite being non-alcoholic, that it always threatened to explode the bottles we put it in. The only safe place to keep it, we discovered, was the coal-shed, where, from time to time, we would discover shattered glass on the floor, and a trail in the coal dust where the liquid had drained away.

We don’t have a coal-shed any more – and we don’t brew ginger beer, if it comes to that. But the image remains with me when I read what Jesus says about new wine needing new skins. He is talking about the shatteringly new thing that was happening in and through his ministry. He was, after all, announcing the kingdom of God – saying that God was now becoming king in a whole new way, and performing actions to suit the words. Something quite different was coming to birth from anything that had happened before. Something powerful and explosive...

Taken from Mark for Everyone by Tom Wright