<p>9:61 <i>And another also said: I will follow you Lord, but first permit me to bid farewell to them that are at my house</i>- The urgency of the call to preach is taught by the way that the Lord called men to go preaching at the most inconvenient times for them- such as when they were in the midst of casting a net into the sea to catch fish during their workaday lives, or whilst Matthew was counting coins at his tax table. The Lord even insisted that a man not fulfil his most basic Jewish duty to bury his father- but rather go and preach the Gospel <i>immediately</i>. The poignancy of all this becomes the deeper when we realize that in first century Palestine, burial took place on the day of death. The son had just that day lost his father, and was willing to miss the traditional six days of mourning to go preach for the Lord. But no, the Lord wanted him to go <i>there and then, immediately.</i> No delay for anything was possible in the light of the knife-edge urgency of sharing Christ with others.</p>