Release Date: October 28th, 2026It's Good to be Here!
- by Rene Baergen
It’s good to be here!
This is Peter’s response to what we call the transfiguration of Jesus, in Mark 9. Jesus doesn’t necessarily disagree with Peter, but he also seems to be on a schedule. There is work to be done after all. So, very quickly it’s down the mountain for the disciples—don’t breathe a word—and back into the fray of life, to help—to minister—to the needs that await. That’s how I’ve tended to read the story of Mark 9. I’ve tended to read the story of Mark 9 as a call back into the busy-ness of life. There’s not a moment to lose. The world is a hurting place. And life is not lived on the mountain top.
What does it mean to call ‘here’ good?
But today, with the sun that glints on the leaves blushing red outside my window, I am caught by Peter’s words: It’s good to be here.
What does it mean to be here? What does it mean to call ‘here’ good? (And didn’t somebody else call here ‘good’ first?)
We live with an impending sense of the next thing, in other words, in fear or in faith.
We live in a society that rushes forward. Call it progress if you will. We are drawn by dread and anxiety or hope and desire for change—take your pick—but we are drawn, nonetheless, eyes fixed firmly on the future. We live with an impending sense of the next thing, in other words, in fear or in faith. At least that is my experience of September. And there is nothing wrong with that. Lord knows that change is needed. Lord knows, and shares, I believe, the yearning for a new day when justice will roll like a river. How else to get there but with eyes on the prize?
In the beginning being here was good (enough).
Interestingly Mark’s Gospel shares this sense of urgency, driving forward with barely a chance to breathe. So when the disciples want to press pause, we shouldn’t be surprised at Jesus’ reaction. When the disciples want to linger—even to bask—just for a moment, in the glow, Jesus urges them on. No one lives on the mountain top after all. And there is work to be done—committees to be struck and programs to be planned. Sermons to be written. We are called to be the hands and the feet of Jesus.
But in the light of those leaves blushing red ‘just because’ (Why else do they do it?), it is also good to be. That’s where the story starts after all—where all our stories begin, if you stop to think about it, and certainly where our scriptural story finds its mooring. In the beginning being here was good (enough). That’s what strikes me today, or better said, what invites me today, at the edge of another church year, which carries what it will carry: likewise to be, if only for a passing moment, here, ‘idle and blessed’ as Mary Oliver puts it (in The Summer Day.) It is good to be, and good to be in this peculiar place we call here—with feet on this particular piece of ground, in a watershed that is not just any watershed but rather peculiarly ‘here.’
Because here is where God meets us.
Why? Why indeed. Because here is where God meets us.
May you have the boldness, and patience, to be idle, and blessed, this season, if only for a moment; and may you have eyes to see the God of blushing red ‘just because’ leaves coming to meet you precisely where you are.
- Rene Baergen is on the pastoral team at First Mennonite Church Kitchener