Reaching out (Mark 5:21-43)
The Gospel of Mark tells the story of a precarious moment.
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In the olden days of my youth, I was a hay-baling farmboy. It went like this: My brothers and I would balance on a heaving flat wagon hitched behind a hay baler pulled by an old green tractor. We trundled through the field while the baler swept up a swath of cut alfalfa in front, compressed it into large rectangles with some huffing and thudding, and then pushed the bales out the rear shoot. When the bales reached the tipping point on the shoot, we would reach across the gap between baler and wagon, gaff them with antique metal hooks, and drag them onto the hay rack, where we stacked them like an Aztec pyramid. It was all a little precarious.
