The Power of a Transit Blessing 

Sometimes a blessing on its way to a specified address has been beneficial in transit to an unplanned person somewhere else.  Jesus was on His way to heal the dying daughter of Jairus when a sick woman jumped in the way to get her healing.  She was not His destination, but she got what she needed.  It was so remarkable that Jesus noted it, realising that something He had been carrying to ‘deliver’ somewhere else had just been collected in part by someone else – without her name being on the parcel. 

Jesus was not headed in that sick woman’s direction, but His mission to somewhere else became her personal transforming encounter, by divine default (Mark 5:21-42).  If she had waited until He would come as specifically for her as He had been going then for Jairus’s daughter, she might have waited forever.  It is not until your name is written on a miracle pack that you can be sure it can benefit you also.  A prayer intended for the healing of somebody’s stomach can be the healing of your broken legs.  A message for the deliverance of a sinner ten years ago might also have been intended for you today, if you would dare to reach out for it.

Even a despised dog once got healing-crumbs from noble bread in transit to honoured children.  It was a Greek Syrophenician woman.  Like a hot knife cutting through cold butter, Jesus told her plainly and bluntly that what He had was not for her type; that she was not on His holy list for any present miracle.  He was carrying bread for children who unfortunately had not come for it, because they did not all know what they had.  She said that she could make do with the crumbs under the lavish table if the bread seemed impossible.  She got what she asked for; mere crumbs that instantly changed the life of her demonized daughter and put her own desperate story in the Holy Book (Mark 7:24-30).  If mere crumbs could do so much so soon for a ‘dog,’ how much more would the bread have done for the children, if they knew what they had!

That takes me to another story – the story of a blind man with hearing ears, who had heard much about Jesus of Nazareth and wondered when that Man would come his blind way.  Then suddenly, one day, he heard the street commotions of a mass movement.  He couldn’t see, but he could hear. When he asked the seeing the meaning of what he could hear, they told him that it was that Man he had always wished he could meet, but the Man was headed somewhere else, too busy with better folks and too important to be distracted by a common blind street beggar.

That was a transit opportunity he couldn’t afford to miss.  He cared less about the ‘proper protocols’ that then stood everywhere like callous giant boulders forbidding his desperate path.  At once he raised his voice and “began to CRY OUT, and say, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me” (Mark 10:47).  He screamed louder than the noisy large crowd could hush his darting voice.  Jesus stopped to give him special attention, even though that blind man had not been on His schedule for the day.  Nobody was too ‘common’ for His uncommon love and attention.  Thus did a desperate Bartimaeus put his name in the Holy Scriptures, snatching a miracle where there had been none in his name, from a Master headed somewhere else.

The Gospel of Luke was addressed to Theophilus, a nobleman that was Greek or Roman, a disciple of St Luke.  Today, that private letter written as a discipleship manual to a Gentile convert has become a global blessing to all ages, a transit blessing more beneficial to its secondary receivers than the originally intended.

Sometimes God has you in mind even in a miracle clearly addressed to someone else.  For example, the Master’s letters addressed to each of the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3 often ended on the same significant note: “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches” (Revelation 2:7, 11, 17, 29; 3:6, 13, 22).  In other words, whereas each letter was addressed to a particular church, there was something in it for anyone “that hath an ear” to hear and receive it.

In this season, listen carefully to messages and prayers in ‘transit.’  There could be a miracle encoded in them for you.  Don’t wait until the pastor has called your name or the priest would lay hands on your head.  If you can’t get the bread, at least, don’t miss the crumbs.  Even transit crumbs have done such wonders that have baffled children who shunned their bread.  In the words of Fanny Crosby’s hymn, I pray for me and you,

Pass me not, O gentle Saviour,

Hear my humble cry

While on others Thou art calling,

Do not pass me by 

 

Saviour, Savour,

Hear my humble cry

While on OTHERS Thou art calling,

Do not pass ME by. Amen.

From The Preacher’s diary,
December 20, 2023.