I am always amazed at what touches people when I write these devotions. I try to be Scripturally correct. I try to explore word meanings or ideas that we may not readily think of. I always try to encourage my own and others’ walks with the LORD Jesus Christ. I want to speak truth; but do it with compassion and kindness. I know the Gospel is offensive to some; I know it is challenging to most. I also know that without that firsthand experience of knowing and loving Jesus, my life would be so much different, and not in a good way.
Still, I am amazed that often the devotions that seem to really resonate with people are the simplest—like a recent one from May 23 about my hugging a woman in a Cracker Barrel restaurant who missed her mom. We were strangers and it was simply a compassionate moment between a mom who often misses her children, and a daughter who needed a “mom hug.”
I really should not be amazed, however, for it is often the simple kindness and compassion I see in Christ Jesus that most ministers to me. Like the time he was approached by the leper who begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”
Mark tells us that Jesus was filled with compassion and he reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately the leprosy was gone, and the man was cured. [Mark 1:40-42]
I often wonder when I read that story how long it had been since that leper had experienced a compassionate touch as the law dictated that anyone who did touch him would become unclean. Then Jesus came by, stopped to listen, and touched him. And in that touch, he was made whole. Sometimes it is simply a touch, or a hug, that ministers most.
