One choice can change everything

This morning I felt challenged and impacted by one verse in particular from my morning reading. It was Mark chapter one verse 45 - where it says that the man who had been healed of leprosy ignored Jesus' command to keep quiet about what had happened to him. Instead, he went around telling everyone that he met. It's understandable: his life had been changed forever and he wanted to let people know about it. But the result of his enthusiastic "witnessing" was that it became impossible for Jesus to enter publicly into any towns or villages. 

You know those Jesus films where we always see Him out in an isolated place, surrounded by groups of people who have come to hear His teaching? That was necessary largely because of this leper's choice to disobey what Jesus had asked of him. That one man's actions, his decision to ignore what Jesus requested, made a huge difference to the early course of Jesus' ministry.

It could be easy for you or me to think that our "small" act of obedience or disobedience won't really make that much difference in the grand scheme of things. That choice not to forgive, that decision to contribute financially, that embarrassment that stopped us from speaking to someone...  We think that our lives are inconsequential and that these daily choices don't really make that much of an impact. But sometimes, as in this case, that one step of obedience, or that one seemingly small act of disobedience can totally change everything!