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As they were proceeding on their journey someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” …
And to another he said, “Follow me.” But he replied, “(Lord,) let me go first and bury my father.”
But he answered him, “Let the dead bury their dead. But you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

Funny how you can have new perspectives on things you’ve read or heard a million times. As I was reading this morning’s reading, it occurred to me that maybe this man’s father wasn’t even dead yet. I’m a pretty literal person, so I always took this passage to literally mean the man had died and was in preparation for burial. But much more expository of this man’s soul is if he was caring for his elderly parents and felt he was needed there, and felt he couldn’t follow Christ until those demands had been satisfied. I don’t often put burying the dead ahead of my Savior, but how many other ways do I let mundane obligations interfere with actively following Christ? How many times do I allow personal frustrations, ill temper, or busyness to cloud my vision of where Christ is leading me?