Glimpses

Social media has helped people across the planet to keep in touch, to share their lives – their news, thoughts, opinions and photos in a way like never before. Applications like Instagram take it to the next level and enable us to show carefully curated photos – chosen, cropped, edited and filtered at our discretion. At best these are just aspects of our lives. Glimpses really. More often than not they’re the best parts of the best days and provide us with only a fragmented picture of what our life is like. Just like glimpsing the sun through trees – partial, incomplete and suggesting there is more.

I have often wondered about the woman who touched Jesus cloak and received healing. Had she heard stories of how Jesus healed? Did hope arise in her spirit and encourage her to find Him? This woman would have been an outcast, spent years in isolation. No one would have gone near her for fear of becoming unclean themselves. I imagine her standing apart from everyone else, nervous, scared, watching the crowd. I see her catching glimpses of Jesus as He moved through the people clamouring for His attention. I see her eyes following Jesus trying to see more of Him. And those glimpses that she caught of Jesus gave her courage to walk toward the crowd and to press through, past people, risking derision and rejection. Bravely she pushes through until she lays hold of Jesus coat. She knows with Him lies her healing.

Her glimpses of Jesus then become an encounter with Jesus. He turned, saw her, spoke to her and she received her healing. In our daily lives we can too catch glimpses of Jesus. Glimpses as we read our Bible, through worship, through prayer. These glimpses all carry with them the potential for an encounter with God. As we read our Bible we hear His voice speaking to us, to our situation. In worship we encounter His presence and feel His love. Through prayer we hear His heartbeat and love for us. We just have to push through, to know that the glimpses holds the promise of more of Him.

Let our glimpses of Jesus take us into an encounter with Him.