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Matthew 9:18-26

Sometimes when Jesus preformed miracles, he tried to keep them a secret, but it’s hard to keep those kinds of things quiet.  People tend to talk.  Imagine if they’d had the internet back then!  We would have known every detail of every miracle the second they happened and there would have been video proof.

While there wasn’t a video of the miracles in today’s passage, it does end by saying “News of this spread through all that region (v. 26).”  The days of Jesus trying to quietly go about his business were long over.  Once news had spread, everyone was looking to get close to him.

The woman who had been bleeding for twelve years said to herself, “if I only touch his cloak, I will be healed” (v. 21) and she was.  How amazing it must have been to be there and witness Jesus healing the sick, raising the dead and driving out demons.  I’m guessing it would have been pretty easy to become a follower once you’d seen something like that.

So, I’m wondering if that’s one of the reasons why Jesus wanted to keep things quiet?  Was it because he knew how easy it would be to gain followers with miraculous acts and he didn’t want it to turn into a chaotic show? Was it because he knew faith is rooted in never seeing yet still believing?

Most of us will go our whole lives never witnessing miracles like the ones Jesus performed, but our lives are still filled with them.  We just have to know what to look for.  It may be an addict entering treatment for the third time or a job coming through after months of unemployment.  God is at work and like the synagogue leader’s daughter we want Him to take us by the hand and raise us from death to a new life with Him.

Prove It!

The heavens declare the glory of God;

   the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
   night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
   no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
   their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.
It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
   like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
It rises at one end of the heavens
   and makes its circuit to the other;
   nothing is deprived of its warmth.

Psalm 19:1-6

I am an inquisitive person. I rarely take things at face value; I almost always demand proof. I investigate. I interrogate. It seems like I’m arguing, but I’m actually testing. I want to know if the things people say are true and I want to know why they’re true. A lot of Christians shy away from talking about God because they’re intimidated by people like me. God has never been intimidated in the least.

I questioned the existence of God once. Not out of frustration or bitterness, but on a calm, rational, deeply intellectual level. I dismissed as opinion everything I’d been told was fact about God, and I opened my mind to every possibility. I studied the major world religions, read tomes of philosophy, and took many long, reflective walks in the park.

It took seven years of God revealing his many disputed characteristics to me before I became a Christian again, but God almost immediately answered my core question: Does God exist? 

I often used to walk out on a bridge in the park and stare down at a stream and look up at the sky and listen to the water fall over the rocks and contemplate the heavens and … I think I always knew that God exists in some form because the proof of the creator is in the creation.

As it is written in Romans 1:20, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”