A Year of Prayer: Season One Weekday DevotionalsSample

‘“Should we pay, or shouldn’t we?” But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. “Why are you trying to trap me?” he asked. “Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.”’ (Mark 12:15 NIV)

How interesting that Jesus didn’t just say, ‘Imagine a coin’ or ‘Pull it out of your own pocket and tell me what you see.’ Instead, there’s an invitation right then and there for the people watching to take the day’s wages - a denarius – to walk it over, place it in Jesus’ hands, and then sit back and listen. How carefully the owner of that denarius must have watched the coin in the hand of the Messiah!

Jesus doesn’t operate just in the realm of ideas and ideals—he invites us to touch, taste, see, and feel with him. He examines alongside and asks us to go and fetch, to bring and look, to see over his shoulder as he, too, works things together in real-time. There is the sense of an apprentice at the side of the one who knows, a Master creative, working in real-time to teach us the tools of the trade. Salvation and the Kingdom of God are at hand.

How incredible that this Master Storyteller of ours uses all our senses to engage our whole selves. The word ‘hypocrisy’ means to ‘play a part as if on stage or feign goodness.’ Jesus did not pantomime or pretend to be good. He asks us to be authentic, to judge for ourselves what is good like he does, inspired by God’s word and the enlightening of our Holy Spirit. Jesus asks us to become just like him.

‘Whose image is this?’ Jesus goes on to say. We can’t exist separately from the world, but we can live out faithfully the precepts God asks for within the concepts of culture at large. Let us do both well so that others may look and see the image of God within us and themselves and turn to God.

Prayer: Jesus, let me see your image revealed in me afresh, and in doing so, recognise you at work in my community also.

Action: Read all of Mark Chapter 12.