Animals and angels

Mark 1: 9-13

⁹ At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptised by John in the Jordan. ¹⁰ Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. ¹¹ And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”

¹² At once the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness, ¹³ and he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him.

Have you ever heard a pastor say, “after you are baptised the devil will try to attack you even harder”? Clearly there is some biblical basis for it. Having said that, I still don’t like it, having heard young people that were baptised young saying things like, “My life was great until my baptism. Then everything went bad.”

Often as people who attend church, we have a special event or a season of blessing and we feel like things are going great. We experience the Holy Spirit touch our lives and know that God loves us. And then comes the wilderness experience. In the wilderness, Jesus is isolated from friends and family, support, companionship, even food and shelter. He is alone. Sickness, redundancy, death, relationship issues, bills and stress all come into our lives at some point in time. Interestingly, Mark doesn’t focus on the temptations and how Jesus deals with them, as some of the other gospels do.

It just ends with the simple phrase, “and angels attended him.” I know that in the lowest points of life, whatever I are going through, God still claims me as a son or daughter, through the covering love of Jesus. And that means, even in the lows, his angels are there.