Daily Lesson for January 29, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from Mark chapter 6 verse 39:

"Then he commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass."

The Bible is usually not heavy in descriptive detail.  As Tom Long says, the Bible does not say something like, "He zipped his brown, patent-leather briefcase, put on his yellow fedora and stepped out beneath the azure sky."  That's why when the Bible does give specific detail and color it's time to pay attention.  Today's lesson, the feeding of the 5,000, gives descriptive detail; understanding the detail helps us understand the story. 

When Jesus stepped out of the boat he saw the multitudes of people and "had compassion on them for they were like sheep without a shepherd."  Just before he went to feed them we are told he made them sit down on the green grass. The color of the grass is a small but curious detail. It's curious because Mark never gives descriptions like this and because, well, the grass is almost never green in Galilee.  It's like saying the grass was green in El Paso.

So what's up?

Think about it.  The sheep are in want, but the shepherd provides by first having them sit down in green pastures. Remember hearing something like that before?  "The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not be in want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures . . ."  It's the Twenty-third Psalm.

The lesson today is that Jesus sees us in our multitudes of hunger and helplessness and has compassion on us. He comes to feed and to care for us. He calms our spirits and eases our fears and sets a banquet table for us right in the middle of a dry and barren desert.  He is our Good Shepherd and he makes provision -- today on the green grass, and tomorrow beside still waters, and when the time comes even in the valley of the shadow of death. His goodness and mercy do indeed follow us all the days of our lives and we trust him that he knows the way that we might dwell in the house of the LORD forever.