AN ORDINARY JOURNEY

It started out as an ordinary journey.

And despite its risk and danger, it remained an ordinary journey because these are the risks and dangers of all of our everyday lives. From the mundane to the extreme, from the physical to the spiritual, from life to death, from the chronic to the emergency, from the inconvenient to the tragic, we can see so much of our lives in the sequence of events that Jesus and His disciples experienced in Luke 8:22–56—a storm on the lake, a demon-possessed man, a bleeding woman, Jairus with his daughter. When we read their stories together, these four miracles “reflect an escalation, since they progress from external threats to more internalized threats, culminating in the direct threat of death itself.”* But the collective picture is that of Jesus’ power over all those things that attack, degrade, and destroy our lives.

“Together they show Jesus’ comprehensive power and authority. . . . Jesus can deal with all of these attempts to overwhelm humankind.”† Whether it was weather, demonic power, disease, or even death, not only was Jesus’ power demonstrated in response to each of those threats, but those who were with Jesus were repeatedly amazed at His power and authority. Additionally, they witnessed His care and concern for those who were hurt and excluded by the destructive powers. Not every day will see us confront all of these dangers and threats, but across all of our days, we will confront each of them at different times and in various ways.

And many of those days will begin as ordinary days, with us setting out on ordinary journeys. But on both our ordinary journeys and our unexpected or extraordinary journeys, we begin them with Jesus. He will be journeying with us, and we might have the opportunity to witness His power.

* Darrell L. Bock, Luke 1:1–9:50, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1994), 754. † Bock, 754.