One of the simple pleasures of my life that has an outsized impact on my overall wellbeing is participating in the small group Bible study available through my church. I haven’t always been able to participate, and I know there will be times in the future when it again won’t be an option, but it’s been such an impactful and important part of my spiritual development throughout my adult life. We’re currently going through the first part of Luke, and one of the overarching themes we see throughout the Gospels, and which is highly evident in Luke 4, is how Jesus interacts with people.
It’s perhaps clearest in Luke 4:40. When the multitudes are coming to Jesus to be healed, we’re told that Jesus “laid His hands on every one of them and healed them”. This isn’t the only instance; it’s just the most obvious in which we see that Jesus engages with people as individuals. It would have been well within His ability and power to wave His hand or speak a word and heal all of those people at the same time, and skipped the personal interaction. It would have been far more efficient, and equally effective, to do a mass healing. But that’s not how Jesus chose to make it happen. He spoke with, and touched, and healed, and truly SAW individuals, not a crowd. There’s a tenderness, kindness, thoughtfulness evidently manifested as He restored each one to community.
That’s how He still chooses to engage with each of us today. He still sees and hears and cares for each of us individually, and that’s how we come to Him as well. We don’t come lumped in together with our family of origin, our current family, or the local church to which we belong; we come to Him in our own faith. That tenderness and kindness is still evident as He restores us individually to community with the church as a whole and with the Lord.
That should rightly have an impact on how we approach the Lord. We have access with confidence so that we may boldly approach the throne of grace, confident that He is not too busy to hear, or too occupied to pay attention. The Lord’s eyes are on His people, and His ears are open to their cries, and that goes for His individual people, not simply the collective.
I agree. We talked about that last week and last evening in reference to Luke 5: 12-13. Jesus is our personal Savior in all ways, more than we can even imagine.