MONDAY

Mark 5:1-20

Perhaps you can remember singing, “Blessed be the ties that bind.” While the song is all about the richness of community and how we can celebrate as we are bound together in love, you can probably also think of other ties that can bind us in ways that are not occasions for celebration.

Cravings. Addictions. Patterns of behavior. The need to achieve or please in order to be “OK.” Dysfunctional relationships. A physical limitation. Things that seem significant, and petty things that absorb more of our attention than we wish they did.

Do you have ties that bind in this way?

As we have been noticing this month, the children of Israel had physical, cultural, and even political ties that bound them in ways that they were not celebrating. God worked to set them free not only from those ties, but also in other, more spiritual ways they were bound, a process that continued long after they were released from Egypt.

In today’s passage, Mark tells a story about being set free from the ties that bind. As you have the opportunity to see Jesus at work in this story, reflect on the following questions:

• Aside from the chains that could not physically contain him, how would you describe what it was that bound this person?

• When Jesus asks him for his name, he responds with “Legion . . . for we are many.” While there was overt demonic involvement in this story, have you had moments when you felt fragmented— like you are different people depending on the situation or role you are in?

• Verse 15 describes the freed man as “in his right mind” again. In what ways have you experienced Jesus freeing you from roles and expectations that might leave you feeling fragmented, allowing you to have just “one name” again, and be at peace “in your right mind”?

• When Jesus frees us in this way, what do you think the name would be that Jesus would restore to us?

• As you think about the things that you may struggle with that “bind” you in some way, in what ways do you sense Jesus offering you the opportunity to be set free?

Take a few moments to share with God what is on your heart in prayer.