No procrastinating

After He was baptized, Jesus went out into the desert for 40 days. Wild animals were there, but angels came and helped him. After that, Jesus went to the town of Galilee, telling people there, "The kingdom of God is near. Come back to God."

"Procrastination" is a huge word. It means putting things off, not doing them until the very last minute -- and lots of people do it!

If you put things off, the things you're not doing seem to get bigger and bigger. It starts to feel like dealing with a wild animal: The things you're procrastinating about seem scary and horrible, and you want to run away from them.

In this week's Gospel (Mark 1:12-15), Jesus had to deal with a big event: It was time for Him to start teaching people about God. He knew what would probably happen -- that people would ignore Him or think He was crazy. Before He started, He went to the desert to pray for 40 whole days!

There, He saw wild animals. Maybe those animals were real, but Jesus also had to deal with the "wild animal" of the thing He was putting off. He had to get ready to go out and teach.

If you've put something off for a while, getting it done makes you feel a lot better! Often, you feel like you've tamed a wild animal -- or like the thing you procrastinated about wasn't so big and scary after all.

Praying about His problems helped Jesus. He stopped procrastinating, went to Galilee and did what He was supposed to do. It was a big deal, but He realized He should just start with a small step: telling people to come back to God. That message wasn't so scary that it was worth procrastinating about!

(03-06-03) [[In-content Ad]]