“Jezus zei tegen hen: ‘Kom, volg Mij!’” (Marcus 1:17)
“‘Come, follow me,’ Jesus said…” (Mark 1:17)
When I feel God has led me to the same passage of Scripture more than once then I figure He’s trying to tell me something! For reasons of language practice, I often use my Dutch bible for my personal readings. I took an imaginative Ignatian approach one morning to Mark 1:16-20 and became happily fixated for many minutes on the commanding words of Jesus in verse 17: ‘Kom, volg Mij!’ (Come, follow me.) A couple of days later in the College’s class on Spiritual Formation it so happened we were asked to look at exactly the same passage using exactly the same approach, albeit in English this second time. This approach involves engaging in a biblical episode imaginatively with all your senses and reflecting on the experience with questions such as: ‘What struck me? What moved me? Why did I react that way? What did I see that changed the way I see God or others or myself? What should I do about this?’
For me it was a renewal of my sense of calling and connection and purpose. It was about a renewed invitation to be with Jesus every day, to walk with Jesus daily, to start with Jesus each day and to let Him determine where we ended up each day. Everyone will see different things in this verse of course. How I reacted to the verse is not meant to be prescriptive of how anyone else should react to it. My point is simply to ask: ‘What is God trying to tell you?’ ‘Is there some word of Scripture that keeps leaping out at you?’ ‘Has God been trying to get your attention?’