My mom was the best. When I was growing up, if the adults were playing a game, I could be on her team, and sit on her lap and watch, even though I was too little to understand. If there were cookies to be made, she made me think she needed my help. Though we loved playing outside and with friends, sometimes my mom would need to give us a little shove to get out there. My mom would later invite us in, and still does these same things for the new little children in the family. 

One of my children likes to ask, “but what if…”, looking for gray areas around rules. The problem with this is that it misses the heart of the rule. Here the teachers of the Law are playing the same game, not because they wonder about the Law, but because they were hoping to trip Jesus up.

Sometimes we excuse sin because we believe the lie from Satan that if it's a personal issue, that won’t hurt anybody else, then is it really a big deal? This way of thinking is far from the truth. Unrepentant sin hurts ourselves and others. We are answerable to God for our actions, and the hurt, intended or otherwise, that we cause others.

I had to read this passage several times before I caught one small phrase: “because he was not following us” (Mark 9:38). Other translations say “because he was not one of us”  (Mark 9:38). The disciples had done the hard thing. They had followed Jesus, and now, that was affording them some status.

Once, on a tour of a medieval village, we were taught the phrase “gardylou” which was the Gaelic slang for a French phrase that meant “mind the water.” The guide told us that in the small 10x10ft dirt floor home under the city streets, likely 16 people would have lived.