Waiting in the Crowd

So it was, when Jesus returned, that the multitude welcomed Him, for they were all waiting for Him.(Luke 8:40 NKJ)


The gospel writer Luke reports (Luke 8:40) that the multitude was waiting for Jesus when He returned from his trip across the Sea of Galilee to the Gadarenes. All the years that I have heard this story, I have delighted in picturing myself in that crowd: excited, expectant, and (anachronistically) privileged to be there, in 1st Century Galilee, when Jesus walked the earth.

I know that I know that I know that I know that my redeemer lives. What dissolves the separation of 2,000 and ten years of accumulated evangelism and schism, interpretation and magesterium, missions and miracles, and the rise and fall of “who-do’s;” what spans the divide of two centuries and a decade of prayer and practice is a simple, intuitive yearning to have been standing on the edge of the lake putting aside all else to wait for one thing each day---the Master’s return.