A 3 Day Line

The hype is here and the phone is near. The month of October will not only bring in the autumn weather (hopefully) but also the dearly awaited Iphone 5 with upgraded gadgets and all that good ol' Apple stuff. By now we all have learned that on the day it arrives, there will be lines. There will be crowds everywhere, not just throughout our country but the world. Have you stood in one of these lines yet? If so, you get the picture of what this is like. Lots of eager people waiting in line since early hours in the day and for long hours at a time. You can imagine how much these people have waited patiently or anxiously for Apple's latest smart phone.

Well, a very long time ago, people also waited in lines and crowds. Huge crowds. In one instance it was a 3 day period and the crowd numbered up to 4,000. People had heard of a man who went from town to town teaching and healing. They either heard the news or followed him to where he sat by a mountainside. Finally!, they were in line to receive something they had wanted for a long time; healing. They would receive it from Jesus. Picture the Iphone crowds, but in line for something greater and so much more affordable; it was free!! No contracts, no monthly bills, and not even system flaws. These people wanted to see Jesus, they wanted to be touched and made better. They wanted to be able to walk, to speak, to hear. Jesus received them freely and healed them all. And hear this, something else you will never get from any brand or type of product, no matter how cool it is. Even after how tired he must have been, after he transformed their lives by healing them all, he saw them and said, "I have compassion for these people; they have been with me three days and have nothing to eat. I do not want to send them away hungry, or they may collapse on the way." (Matthew 15:32) With that compassion and genuine love, he made a way to feed them all.

Maybe you are or aren't desperately seeking healing like many of these people were, but do you have an eager and desperate desire for the Lord, like these peopled did or like the early iphone purchasers have for the iphone? Would you wait in line, if you had to for Jesus? What line is our heart in today? Do we want to know what Jesus is about more than what the next hot product is like? I can only begin to imagine what this 4,000 people crowd must have looked like or how they felt to know they were next in line to see Jesus and receive healing. What must it have been like to travel to Jesus on foot from afar and on a limited supply of food? But I can desire to have this great hunger for Jesus, and an excitement to see him and be transformed.

Watch this short video of an iphone4 crowd and imagine what it looked like when people awaited for Jesus.