Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written. (John 21:25)
An encounter with Jesus never left a person the same. An encounter with Jesus left you healed, delivered, enlightened, confused, enraged or more. The only thing an encounter with Jesus would not leave you is non-plussed. In the four gospels we read of these encounters. Some of the people are named, but many are not.
For the first few centuries the early church discerned which accounts of the ministry of Jesus could be trusted and which should be discarded as legend or worse. And so we have the four gospels. But even allowing for this filtering process, we know that Jesus performed many other miracles, that he taught for countless more hours and that he encountered many more people along his three-year ministry journey. Those stories are lost to us - the stories that would fill many more books. But there is an important story that is not lost to us - one that we know intimately.
John tells us that Jesus did many other things as well. Jesus is still doing many other things. He is not a dead hero but a risen saviour. He is not absent from us but present to us by the power of the Holy Spirit. He is writing countless new stories in the lives of men and women around our world - including mine. Jesus is still healing, still delivering, still teaching, still enraging and still confusing people. Thank you Jesus that you are writing new stories every day. Thank you that one of those stories is mine.
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