Jesus and Everyday Things
We are stirred when we read about Jesus performing miracles, signs, and wonders during His three-year earthly ministry—healing the sick, raising the dead, casting out unclean spirits. God-Incarnate who left heaven to redeem us.
Yet, we are also aware of how well He identified with the commonplace life about Him when He lived on earth. We see it so clearly as we read the gospels.
He talks of food: figs, grapes, grains, bread, fish, salt, herbs, oil and wine. Of tending sheep and riding donkeys. He mentions plowing, seeds, flowers, birds, trees, rocky soil, tares, and thorns. Wheat, barley, harvest, vineyards and barns. Feasts and celebrations. He turned water into wine at a wedding. And He instructed Peter to pay their taxes.
He speaks of women grinding grains on millstones, kneading dough for bread, sewing and patching garments, drawing water from wells, searching for a lost silver coin with lighted lamp, sweeping a house clean, nursing babies. Of jewelry and costly perfume.
Jesus showed great compassion for children, widows, the sick and crippled, the poor, the hungry, the mourning, the sinner, a woman caught in adultery.
He comments about folks with various livelihoods: priests, lawyers, soldiers, money-lenders, laborers, fishermen, tax-collectors, farmers, royal officials, and those busy in the marketplaces. Multitudes from all walks of life flocked to hear Him teach.
Hospitable and caring: After blessing and multiplying a lad’s small lunch to feed thousands, He instructed His disciples to gather the leftovers, lest nothing be lost. He cooked a breakfast of fish for His disciples on a charcoal fire beside a lake after His resurrection. The Bethany home of Martha, Mary and Lazarus was among His favorite places to receive and enjoy hospitality.
In His teachings He mentions money, wages, gold, silver, copper, money belts, and keys. Commenting on the weather, He talks of a red and threatening sky, storms, battering of waves, contrary winds, and lightning flashes.
Yes, Jesus was familiar with ordinary everyday things of life about Him. Though He was Co-Creator of the universe, He often called Himself “the Son of Man.” Divine, yet human. “Mankind needed a man in heaven,” I heard a preacher say.
While we marvel about “all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day He was taken up to heaven,” we continue to experience His touch in our own everyday lives today. (See Acts 1:1-2)
Prayer: Father, thank You that whatever our need or circumstance, our Savior Jesus Christ can identify with us. I am so grateful He was willing to live on earth and then die for our sins. I am thankful too that someday we will meet Him in heaven and see the home He has prepared for us there. Amen.
Scriptures: For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. (Luke 19:10 NASB) But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins. (Matthew 9:6 NKJV)
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being…And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1-3,14 NASB)
For He rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son,in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth…all things have been created through Him and for Him. (Colossians 1:13-16 NASB)
See my book Cast Your Shadow: Influence on Purpose. Available on Amazon.
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