Are you asleep?

Hello everyone.

First of all I want to say sorry to you all for my absense. Life has been busy and I very quickly got out of the habit of writing these things. So today, as I come back to work from some time off I am starting afresh and hoping to be able to see this through!

In my quiet time this morning I was reading something by a guy called Tom Wright on Mark's Gospel. Maybe because I had just woken up, or maybe because its true this really rang home to me and so I am sharing it with you.

At the beginning of Mark's Gospel - John the Baptist arrives on the scene and starts calling people to repent. It is written to help us sense the shock of the new thing that God was doing - he was about to come and live amoung us as Jesus!. GOD WITH US! That is a pretty amazing and shocking thing.

The problem the Jews had was that they had drifted away - almost drifted off to sleep and forgotten about God. Yes they were religious and practiced the ceremonies and the like, but they had fallen asleep in terms of the spirituality and their relationship with God. This is a challenge to us. Have we fallen asleep? Are we just attending out of duty - or are we truely passionate about Christ? This is what Tom Wright says to close:

"It raises the question for us too: where are we asleep today, in our churches, our communities, our personal lives? What might it take to wake us up?"