Jesus commanded them not to tell anyone. But the more he did so, the more they kept talking about it.
Mark 7:36
I am absolutely hopeless at getting out of bed in the mornings. Someone, when I worked at my last school, I managed to get up at 5am to trek from Colchester, where I lived, to London, where I worked. I have no idea how I managed it. Nowadays, I just about make it into work as the bell for first lesson goes! Luckily it’s just a twelve-minute drive these days rather than an hour and a half’s drive-train-walk as it was before! For some reason, on Friday I woke up early though, and so, as I normally do most mornings, I checked my iPhone to see if I had any emails or text messages. I did indeed have an email – an email that caused me to jump out of bed with excitement, which resulted in me actually being early for work for once! The contents of the email had me greatly excited, but I was absolutely determined that I was going to keep my news to myself for a while, just to see what happened. Unfortunately, I was so excited that I had to tell someone, and ended up telling the first colleague I saw! Before I knew it, the whole staff common room knew my news! It’s like that when you get exciting news, though, you just have to share it.
When Jesus came into the gentile region of the Decapolis, people must have started to get excited. Jesus had visited before, and had exorcised a man with quite amazing consequences. People were frightened, but intrigued as to who Jesus was. Since then, he had continued his teaching and healing ministry, and news had spread to the Decapolis of the amazing things that Jesus had done. Now, though, people were astonished at what they had seen. Jesus had cured a deaf and mute man, simply by touching him. A man who could not hear and who could barely speak was now able to do both! It’s no surprise that they felt that just had to tell people what they had seen! Jesus’ insistence that they keep what they had seen to themselves only heightened their excitement about Jesus, and they simply had to tell all of their friends!
So often these days, we seem to regard our faith as a bit of a chore. We can all learn something from those people who witnessed Jesus. Are you so excited about what Jesus has done – what he has done for you – that you simply have to share the news with all your family and friends? If not, why not?!
Header image produced by DALL-E 2 AI on 2 May 2023.
