YOUNG AND RESTLESS.

If the life of any person ever demonstrated that success is never final and failure is never fatal, it was a man who lived in Jerusalim in the 1st century - John Mark. We are introduced to him when a prayer meeting was held in his mother's home when he met  Peter, who had just miraculously been released from prison (Act 12). 

About the same time persecution arose under Nero, and Paul took Mark along with his cousin Barnabas and started his 1st missionary journey. But things didn't go well. Perhaps part of it it was the food. Perhaps the weariness of travel contributed to it. But for sure, it was homesickness - John Mark quit and came home.

Paul didn't like it - he did'nt want a quiter in the ranks. When it came time for the next journey, Paul would not allow Mark to join him and Barnabas; so the two cousins dropped out, and Barnabas took Mark and went to Cyprus. After the Cyprus experience, Mark returned and spent time with Peter, whose style deeply impressed this young man so much that Mark eventually wrote the manuscript we know as the Gospel of Mark. In the New Testament the shortest Gospel is the one Mark wrote - sometimes called, "the bussinessman's Gospel", fast- moving, almost staccatolike, a series of encounters with Jesus Christ. He pictures Christ as a servant whose birth is unimportant, skips the event entirely and immediately begin to decribe the deeds of Jesus Christ. Fourteen times he refers the Him as "the son of man". Matthew and Luke present what might be described as a series of coloured slides, while Mark's Gospel is like a  motion picture of the life of Jesus. Actually what Mark wrote is not a biograply but selected events in the life of Jesus Christ, so that all might know the servant became the Savior of the world.

Was the rift between Paul and this young man ever healed? When Paul was languishing in prison shortly before his execution in A.D. 67, he wrote to Timothy and asked him to come and to bring John Mark with him.

Looking beyond what Mark wrote, you see the heart of a man deeply dedicated and committed to the cause of Jesus. He emphasizes the importance of committment and decisive action, possibly acknowledging his own failure in his earty years.

Success is never final and failure need never be fatal! A mistake or a failure is often a learning experience taking us in the right direction. (Harold Sala)