Summer is here again and that means sun, sands, tans, trips, part time jobs, swimming, cookouts, and just having fun. Most of all summer means getting out of the routine of the school/work year. Sure parents have to keep on grinding it out throughout the week, but the rest of the family gets to sleep in, lay out, and relax. Besides you just spent the other three seasons filling your brain with priceless/useless information and saving up for summer vacation. No more school, no more books, no more same old same old. In fact most of us don’t have any type of “schedule,” to keep during the summer months. No certain time to get up, no certain time to go to sleep, no certain time finish that book, no regular weekly TV shows (they’re all reruns for the summer), and no certain time to bump into Jesus.
Say what…. ”Bump in to Jesus.” Well you see as Christians or seekers we have developed this circuit called church, where we plug in every Sunday, every Wednesday, and sometimes a small group to get a little jolt of Jesus. What we really do though is habitual meeting of friends and families to socialize and hear a thought provoking speaker, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together (Heb 10:25). Then we go out to eat, then home to occasionally pick up the Scriptures for a quick hit and quick unconscious text message to Heaven. Never really touching or getting in touch with Jesus. We just bump into Him much like Peter exclaimed in Mark 5:31 You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’”
Jesus was going about doing the stuff Jesus did, He had just cast 300 demons out of a man called “Legion,” and made the sea pig soup. Then after crossing over the sea, He was greeted with the usual crowd (the church folk, and seekers). They were hoping he would teach or heal someone in grand fashion, they were enamored by Him. So much so that one scripture says they were crushing Him. He was a superstar, people wanted to bump into Him, see Him, or touch the ground where He walked; not to receive from Him, but to say “Jesus touched me (bumped into), looked at me ( I saw His eyes), waved at me (raised His hand to the crowd), I was in the presence of the Lord (He walked near where I was going to be anyway)….. Does that sound like anything that happens at our churches? But there was one lady who had been sick for 12 years. Her thoughts were not of brushing by Him, or being caught be His eyes, nor could she afford to hope that He might walk in her general direction. Her thoughts were “If only I may touch His clothes, I shall be made well.(Mark 5:28).” she knew that she had to get a hold on Jesus. She had to press through the crowd (get by the church stuff), reach out to Jesus (get out of her comfort zone), and touch Jesus (not bump into but get a hold of). Jesus’ response was, “Who touched me?” not because He didn’t know, but because the person who touched Him wanted to get His attention…. for He said ”I perceived power going out from Me (Luke 8:46).”
You see Jesus knows who touches Him. This summer as you go to and fro and have less of a scheduled opportunity to “bump into Jesus,” make a point to press your way through the crowd and grab hold of the Master, even if the only crowd is yourself. You have no real schedule, so go after Jesus and when He asks who touched me….. you can say “it was me,_______, and I can’t make it at all without getting a hold of You Jesus.”
**the story of the woman with an issue of blood can be found in Mark 5:25-34 and Luke 43-48
