Mark would not want you to read this page and feel behind. He spent forty-six years being religious enough to look fine and empty enough to know better. The night it broke he was not in a church. He was alone in a dark room, and Jesus met him there — not with a lecture, with Himself.
So here it is as plainly as he would put it: Jesus is alive. He is not disgusted with you. He is not waiting for you to clean up first, and He is not impressed by the version of you that has it together. He is waiting for you to choose Him.
That is not a soft sentiment. He said it Himself, and He said it to men who were about to run out on Him.
“No longer do I call you servants, for the servant doesn't know what his lord does. But I have called you friends, for everything that I heard from my Father, I have made known to you.”
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, then I will come in to him, and will dine with him, and he with me.”
“Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest.”
“I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will not be hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.”
“Yahweh used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.”
Friendship with Jesus will cost you your hiding. That is the trade he made, and he would tell you it was no trade at all. Jesus will not leave you the way He found you. Some days you will not feel Him. Mark wrote through hospital rooms and scans and an ambulance ride, and he never once wrote that God had gone quiet.
What this is not: a feeling you chase, a list you keep, or a self-improvement project with Bible verses on it. It is a Person you talk to, and a life you hand over one ordinary Tuesday at a time. You will not do it well. He is patient with that.
You do not need better words, a better week, or a better past. You need Him.