Mark 6: 33-34 (NLT)
But many people recognized them and saw them leaving, and people from many towns ran ahead along the shore and got there ahead of them. Jesus saw the huge crowd as he stepped from the boat, and he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things.
After selling out to Jesus seven years ago, one of the first devotionals I consistently completed was Experiencing God. Over the course of those weeks, I encountered dozens of truths that stick with me to this day. Among them is a statement by the authors (and backed up Biblically) which went something along the lines of, “Don’t try to reinvent the Spirit. Watch where God is already at work…and join him there!”
This must have been the same slogan for the crowd in our reading today. They had no real clue as to the full extent of who Jesus was, that He had come to be the sacrifice for sins and the restorer of humanity, that He loved them more than they could possibly imagine, that encountering Him would radically change their lives. All they knew was wherever He traveled, hope, healing, and wholeness followed. Desiring to be filled with such things, they watched where He was going (where God was already working) and joined him. Even beat Him to the spot in this case.
Which leads to our next observation: sometimes we see where God is leading, get there, and, like the crowd here, wait with joyful patience of his arrival. We step out in faith, volunteer for a ministry, enter our calling, do the right thing. And God seems not to be in it immediately. We continue to pray. Continue to wait upon him. Then at His appearance, everything changes. The miraculous occurs. He brings with him the glory and power of the Father. The fruits of the Spirit.
These people experienced it firsthand. And so may we.
