9:28
It is highly significant that the transfiguration took place a short time after the latest revelations. Imagine how the disciples were feeling after all that Jesus has just said to them. The one they trusted in and looked to for salvation, the one they had made sacrifices in order to follow, has just told them He will be handed over and killed. Moreover, He has also told them that they too must be prepared to suffer, and maybe to suffer greatly if they wanted to follow Him. They must have been in a state of utter confusion. Yet they were still following Him. Maybe they were in a state of shock, not quite able to take it all in. So they kept on following. Jesus took Peter, James and John up a mountain to pray, and they were going to receive another revelation, this time a much more encouraging one.
9:29
Oh to have witnessed Jesus praying. I guess that prayer is something many of us find difficult, at least some of the time, wondering if we are “doing it right” or getting anywhere. Here we see an amazing time of prayer that Jesus had, with both His appearance and His clothing changing and become a brilliant white. We need to remember two things. The first is that this is the only time that this happened, or at least the only time we are told about. Usually there was no such dramatic change. Secondly it did happen this time. Similarly there are two mistakes we can make in our expectations of the Christian life (OK, so there are a multitude of mistakes, but we are just going to look at two of them). One is to never expect anything dramatic to happen, the other is to always be expecting the dramatic. As I have said on several occasions , the Bible is wonderfully balanced. There is the suffering and the glory, there is the mundane and the dramatic.
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