Daily Grace
One passage. One idea. A few quiet minutes. Short devotional readings for people being formed by grace, written from a small chair beside still water in Falcon, Colorado.
Pull one up. Read slowly. There is no hurry here.
He Touched Him
He did not need to. He healed people from across a room, with a word, from another town entirely. The power did not require contact. The touch was not a technique.
"And Jesus, moved with compassion, stretched out his hand and touched him." (Mark 1:41)
He touched the leper. He did not need to. He healed people from across a room, with a word, from another town entirely; the power did not require contact. The touch was not a technique. The touch was for the man. Because that man had not been touched by another human being in years. That was the whole architecture of his disease, not the sores but the isolation. He was required by law to shout unclean when anyone came near, to live outside the camp, to watch people cross the road to avoid him.
And Jesus reached out his hand and put it on him. Before the healing. While he was still contagious. That is worth sitting with, because the healing is the part we would have written, and the touch is the part he added, and the touch is the part that tells you what kind of God he is.
He was not disgusted by the man. He has never been disgusted by you. Whatever it is about yourself that you are certain would make him recoil, the thing you keep outside the camp and shout warnings about so no one gets close, he reaches for it. He reached out his hand while you were still unclean, and he touched you, and only then did he say be clean. The order matters. He does not wait for you to be presentable before he draws near. He draws near, and the nearness is the beginning of the healing.