We are starting a series of messages Sunday called 42 Seconds: What can happen in less than a minute. I am basing this off of a great book called 42 Seconds by Carl Medearis, a career missionary to middle eastern countries for decades. He noticed that Jesus had many encounters and if we base those just on the descriptions we have, none of them lasted much longer than 42 seconds. 42 seconds. That’s a brief time. Of course, perhaps we don’t have all the details. True. But with the details we do have we know that Jesus in a short time turned around people’s lives and situations. He brought healing and peace. He showed up and that was what was needed. He asked great questions, “What do you want me to do for you?” and “Do you want to get well?” among them. For these last Sundays of my walk with you, we are going to ask what we might learn for ourselves from the brief encounters Jesus had and the staggering results He achieved. What if we tried employing the seconds He has given us differently by the help of God’s Spirit within us?
We will begin with two great stories from the book of Mark. In his book, Mark detailed out how Jesus had power over nature, the demonic, sickness and death in the stories he placed before the reader in rapid succession from the end of the fourth chapter through the fifth. We will start in the last two of these, a double miracle, the healing of the woman with the 12-year ailment and the raising of Jairus’ daughter. These stories depict Jesus’ encounter with the poorest of the poor and the wealthiest of the rich on the level ground of human loss and need. In these we get a glimpse of how Jesus related to people, no matter their station, as simply that: people. Human beings who desperately needed to encounter hope.
Whereas those around Jesus wanted to categorize the contrasted people in this story, Jesus didn’t. Indeed, He wouldn’t. He never labeled anyone, never diminished humanity, but often, instead asked questions. Here too, “Who touched Me?” and “Why all this weeping and commotion?”
What if we approached time and people like Jesus did? What if we saw others and reached out to them like Him? The change needed in this nation begins in each of our hearts. Over against racism, wickedness and evil, holiness, a change in how we live, will do the most to impact the world. Don’t miss worship at 9 am on Sunday. We will be meeting Pastor Brett in worship and we will hear a Q&A he did with Gayellyn and Kari.