Chris Grantham

After tea, Jesus told his mates to get back into the boat and head round to another town, so off they went.

Meanwhile, Jesus told the crowd, ‘That’s it for the day, time to go, catch you next time.’

Then he hiked up the nearest hill to have a bit of a pray. It was dark by now, he was praying, and the boys were out there rowing the dinghy. Jesus could see them in the distance, and as the wind was coming up rather worryingly, they were having a spot of bother. Jesus, being a compassionate sort of bloke, headed down the hill and started hiking across the lake – which wasn’t a particularly common activity in those days. He was just about to stroll on past them, but they saw him and were a bit spooked - and they yelled out in a fairly frightened tone of voice.

Jesus realised this. ‘Hey, you guys, it’s me, Jesus, no worries.’ He climbed into the dinghy, and believe it or not, the wind stopped dead in its tracks.

‘Well, blow me down!’ they said. ‘We’re still trying to understand how you fed that lot with a couple of whitebait and five bread rolls – and now you’re strolling across the water! What are you on?’ Now, that was a bit of a rhetorical question because they knew Jesus was trying to show them bit by bit something which they couldn’t yet get a hold of.

Eventually they got over to the shore at yet another reserve, hoping for a chance for their guts to settle down. But – you guessed it – the ubiquitous crowd materialised out of nowhere yet again. They’d picked it was Jesus, and many of them had already seen some of his acts. People came from all over bringing their mates who were sick, half dead or even worse. They were yelling out stuff like: ‘Hey, boss, all we need to do is touch your jacket and we’ll be sorted.’ And they did – and they were (sorted, that is).

From Bits of…the Kiwi Bible, published by Penguin 2005
[This book covers all of Mark, a little Matthew and Luke, and the first part of Acts]