What can Jesus do?

It struck me as Rico Tice spoke about how to know Mark's gospel on the final evening of Forum, how strange and yet wonderful some of the requests He faced were.

Look at the story of Jairus in Mark 5. His daughter had just died, we don't know what of but some sort of disease. To say he would have been stricken with grief would be an understatement. But he hears that there's a teacher in town at the time. A carpenter from Nazareth who knew more of Moses' law than any of the Teachers of the time. But then others are saying He's just a heretic, either power hungry or deluded. And what does Jairus do? He goes and asks Jesus to lay His hands on his daughter that she may be made well. And she is made well obviously, because Jesus has authority to do these things, but just consider the situation for a moment. If someone in my family had died, i'm pretty sure that i wouldn't be thumbing the local papers to see if i could get in touch with a local carpenter. Jesus had better be more than a carpenter.

And what about the calming of the storm? The disciples are out in a boat, Jesus, worn out from all He had been doing, was asleep in the back. And a storm comes up, and grizzled, experienced fishermen like His disciples are scared for their lives. So they wake Jesus up, which to us seems to be the obvious thing to do. But how do they refer to Him? 'Teacher'. 'Teacher!'. Again, i don't know about you, but i can't think of any mere teachers i'd want to help me in a situation like that. They must know, they must see that He's more than that. That He has authority over creation. And yet they call Him teacher. He'd better be more than a teacher!

And me. I'm trusting Jesus with my every moment. Trusting that He intercedes for me, that He fills my lungs with air, that He died for me, that He rose again for me. That He has taken the punishment my sin deserves. He'd better be more than a 2000 year old moral philosopher.


He is.