PLEASE READ THIS FIRST: Matthew 14:34-36
What do you sense the Lord saying to you in this passage?
“People begged him to let the sick just touch the edge of his cloak.” (Matthew 14:36)
I think of the woman who touched Jesus’s cloak and was healed (Matthew 9:20-21).
Or how Paul’s handkerchiefs and aprons were used to heal the sick (Acts 19:12).
Our minds go straight to how cloaks, handkerchiefs and aprons can heal people?
But the cloth touched is nothing; we should focus on God’s power at work through them!
Something wonderful passes through these mediums, from God to the desperate.
Like copper, the cloth is just a conductor for the electricity of God’s grace.
God can use anything as a means of grace (even spit to heal a blind person, Mark 8:23).
Jesus is God’s primary means of grace; through him God’s grace is filling the world.
Jesus uses bread and wine as a means of grace, but also the water of foot washing.
Jesus sends his disciples as means of grace, as channels for God’s love and mercy.
People have been blessed and healed through their contact with Jesus’s disciples.
But it is not the disciples, nor the bread and wine, nor the water that does anything.
We are all conductors of grace; God is the source, and the desperate are the receivers.
Are we being good conductors of grace; are people reaching out to us, and being graced?
PRAYER
Lord, I cannot heal anyone, but I can be used by you to heal others. I offer my words, my hands, my prayers, even my handkerchief and apron; use them to grace others!
Recognize and touch! If more people are able to recognize Jesus and touch him – more would be healed – healed in an eternal way. How can people recognize Jesus in us his followers? How can I be a person that people will gravitate to – because I’m close to Jesus. They might not know what makes a faithful follower of Jesus different – but I hope that as a believer I too may emanate a certain magnetism that makes them curious to want to know more – what makes me tick! Lord help me to be that kind of magnet for you!
I need to like Christ unto others. Others need to see Christ living in me. And so this is my prayer:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.