Wow! The Gospel of Mark starts off with a bang. As the late John Madden would say, “Boom!” Here’s what I saw in Mark 1.

• John the Baptist prepares the way, 1 – 8
• Jesus is baptized, 9 – 11
• Jesus is tempted in the wilderness, 12 – 13
• Jesus begins to preach, 14 – 15
  • The time is fulfilled
  • The Kingdom of God is at hand
  • Repent and believe this good news
• Jesus calls Peter, Andrew, James, John, 16 – 20
• Jesus goes to the synagogue in Capernaum on the Sabbath
  • He teaches, 21 – 28
  • The crowds are amazed
  • He casts out an evil spirit
  • The crowds are even more amazed
• Jesus heals Simon’s mother-in-law and others, 29 – 34
• Jesus starts the next day in prayer, then goes to other villages, 35 – 39
• Jesus heals a leper
  • “Don’t say anything”
  • “Show yourself to the priest”
  • The leper does the opposite of both!

Nine sets of events. Let’s focus just on verses 14 and 15:

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1.14, 15, ESV)

Dallas Willard likened verses 14 and 15 to the arrival of electricity to his rural part of the world:

• The time has come!
• Electricity has arrived!
• Change how you do things, connect to the power, and live differently!

He wrote:

As a child I lived in an area of southern Missouri where electricity was available only in the form of lightning. We had more of that then we could use. But in my senior year of high school the REA (Rural Electrification Administration) extended its lines into the area where we lived, and electrical power became available to households and farms.

When those lines came by our farm, a very different way of living presented itself. Our relationships to fundamental aspects of life—daylight and dark, hot and cold, clean and dirty, work and leisure, preparing food and preserving it—could then be vastly changed for the better. But we still had to believe in the electricity and its arrangements, understand them, and take the practical steps involved in relying on it.

You may think the comparison rather crude, and in some respects it is. But it will help us to understand Jesus’ basic message about the kingdom of the heavens if we pause to reflect on those farmers who, in effect, heard the message: “Repent, for electricity is at hand.” Repent, or turn from their kerosene lamps and lanterns, their iceboxes and cellars, the scrub boards and rug beaters, their woman-powered sewing machines and their radios with dry-cell batteries.

The power that could make their lives far better was right there near them where, by making relatively simple arrangements, they could utilize it. Strangely, a few did not accept it. They did not enter the “kingdom of electricity.” Some just did not want to change. – Dallas Willard in The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God, pages 30 – 31.

The Kingdom is at hand. Will we connect with its power?

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3.14 – 21, ESV)