We Make It Hard: Mark 6:51-52
Confusion is compounding. It’s one of the reasons that mastering something is hard but anyone can learn the basics. The basics are simple and easy to figure out. At some point, though, the material gets harder. It takes work to learn it properly. It takes effort to think through what is happening. If it is something we enjoy, we push through and learn the next hard thing. If it is something we don’t enjoy, we often stop, throw up our hands, say it is too hard, and move on. The truth in this is that once we don’t understand something, it makes learning anything else after it even harder.
The disciples are stuck in this dilemma. In the last few hours, they’ve seen Jesus feed a multitude of people with two fish and five loaves of bread. When the meal was over, there was more leftover material than there was beginning material. This is confusing. It is hard to understand. Mark makes a point to say the disciples didn’t understand what happened.
Then, Jesus forces them into a boat and sends them away. They still can’t figure out the miraculous feeding because everyone in the boat is just as confused as everyone else. Suddenly a storm comes up; they certainly don’t have time to talk it through while battling the winds. Then what appears to be a ghost comes walking on water, except it turns out to be Jesus. Not only is Jesus doing the impossible by walking on water, He also controls the weather since the winds cease as soon as He enters the boat.
What chance did the disciples have at figuring anything out? The only person who understood sent them away before explaining it. Jesus compounds matters by adding the lesson of walking on water and the lesson of controlling the elements before they learned the hard lesson from the feeding of the multitude. They were genuinely struggling!
This is life. Life is hard. Life doesn’t often give us one problem at a time. Life isn’t polite and waiting for us to be ready to learn the next thing. Life doesn’t always give us time to motivate ourselves to work through the hard stuff and prepare for the next round. Life just comes.
Even worse, Mark indicates the disciples’ hearts were hardened. This should remind us of Moses and Pharaoh in Exodus. With each plague, Pharaoh’s life got harder. Life came at him too quickly to learn what was going on. So, Pharaoh dug in his heels and grew stubborn. He refused to learn.
The disciples do the same thing. The lessons come fast. Their hearts grow hard. One source of confusion makes it easier to succumb to more confusion. It gets hard and frustrating. I am no different. When life gets hard, I frequently get stubborn and only make it harder to learn. Confusion is compounding.
