April 29

“Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” — JOHN 20:30-31

It’s easy to read the miracles of Jesus and be impressed, yet completely miss the message. When Jesus healed the man with the shrivelled hand in Matthew 12, the Pharisees were more concerned about Him performing a miracle on the Sabbath than the message to which the miracle pointed. When Jesus healed the man at the pool of Bethesda, paralyzed for 38 years, He was actually healing him from settling into the status quo of his comfort zone. When Jesus healed the man born blind in John 9, the disciples argued about who caused his blindness – the man’s sin, or his parents’ sin.

Beware of being like the disciples and Pharisees. We may miss the message of the miracles by looking at the wrong thing. Neither should we remain settled in our comfort zones as they only hold us back. Jesus’ miracles were not performed to get people out of a fix, wonderful as that is, but that we might know who He is, and receive what He has to give. In John 10:10, Jesus said, “I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly.” This life is not just something to be received, but to be lived in the boundless energy of the life Christ imparts to us. His miracles are ‘signs’ that point to the various qualities of that Life which we can experience in Him.

The great danger with the miracles of Jesus is that we stop at the signs. We see them, but fail to understand them. In Jesus’ day, the miracles had become an end in itself. It was a theatre for those who witnessed it; something to observe, enjoy, admire, applaud, worship and talk about, but the point of the miracles was not to entertain the people by Jesus showing them what He could do, but to demonstrate who He is - the Christ, the Son of God, the Giver of Life.

The One who turned water into wine still turns the ordinary into extraordinary. The One who fed the five thousand with five loaves and two small fish still takes the little we have and makes it fruitful. The One who raised Lazarus from the dead is still the resurrection and the Life. The One who healed the man born blind is still the light of the world.

Let’s not stop at the signs, but follow them and submit our lives to Christ.

PRAYER: Dear Lord Jesus, the greatest miracle of all is God having raised You from the dead, and by His Holy Spirit, imparting your resurrected life to live in us. It’s a miracle that keeps on going and I pray, Lord, that it takes place in every man, woman and child who has yet to come to know You.

TO REFLECT UPON: Do I stop at the ‘signs’, or follow them to a greater revelation of Jesus?