He Walked Through the Crowd
Luke 4:18 · John 8:36 (NIV)
Lisa Wilson had to choose between a place to live and her dog.
She lives in Spruce Pine, North Carolina. After her divorce, she needed a new place to rent. Hurricane Helene in 2024 had already squeezed the housing in her area. She could not find an affordable place that would take Eddie, the dog she had raised from a puppy. So she surrendered him to Mitchell County Animal Rescue.
"She was just kind of stuck," said Katie Elkins, who leads the rescue.
On October 7, Good Good Good, a website that reports hopeful news, told what happened next. The daily news digest 1440 shared the story this morning. With help from the national nonprofit Best Friends Animal Society and her community, the rescue raised about 18,000 dollars for housing and moving costs. On September 17, Lisa moved into a new place, and Eddie came with her.
Lisa's life cracked open, and a community helped mend it.
King David, the shepherd king who wrote many of the psalms, prayed for that kind of mending. In Psalm 60, whose heading places it against a backdrop of war, he asks GOD to "mend its fractures, for it is quaking" (Psalm 60:2). David names the cracks out loud and asks GOD to repair them.
Early in HIS ministry, JESUS made a promise of repair. In Nazareth, the town where HE grew up, HE stood up in the synagogue and read from the prophet Isaiah. "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free" (Luke 4:18).
HE reminded them how far GOD's mercy had always reached. GOD sent the prophet Elijah to a foreign widow. GOD cleansed Naaman the Syrian (Luke 4:25-27).
The room turned. Everyone in the synagogue was furious. They drove HIM out of town to the edge of a cliff to throw HIM off. "But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way" (Luke 4:30).
Some readers have lived near someone dangerous. For them, this verse matters. Leaving a place of harm can be a faithful act.
The apostle Paul, whose letters fill much of the New Testament, shows the same wisdom in his letter to Titus, a coworker he called his son in the faith. He tells Titus to remind believers "to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and always to be gentle toward everyone" (Titus 3:2). Later he says a divisive person should be warned twice. After that, Titus should have nothing more to do with them (Titus 3:10). Gentleness and limits live in the same chapter.
That instruction about division in the church does not require someone to remain in danger or warn a harmful person twice before seeking safety.
Luke does not explain how JESUS passed through the crowd that day. John's Gospel describes similar moments when people tried to seize HIM: "no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come" (John 7:30). When the hour did come, HE went to the cross.
A bishop named Irenaeus wrote about the suffering of CHRIST around AD 180. He led the church in Lyon. In his work Against Heresies, Irenaeus argued against teachers who claimed a heavenly CHRIST left the man JESUS before the suffering began. He insisted the opposite. JESUS CHRIST, he wrote, is "one and the same, who did by suffering reconcile us to God" (Against Heresies III.16.9). He called the coming of CHRIST "the invisible becoming visible" (III.16.6).
The same JESUS who announced freedom in Nazareth paid for it at Calvary. In John 8, HE is speaking of freedom from slavery to sin. That is why HIS promise holds. "So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed" (John 8:36).
Paul describes what that freedom does in a person. "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit" (2 Corinthians 3:17-18).
We are being transformed. The work belongs to GOD. HE mends the fractures. HE sets the oppressed free.
And very often HE does it through people. Paul wrote, "Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ" (Galatians 6:2). In Spruce Pine, her community and Best Friends carried part of Lisa's burden. The rescue that took Eddie in also found a way to give him back.
It does leave me thinking about the people who carried my burdens when I could not see a way through.
The cracks in this world are real. So is the One who walked through the crowd, went to the cross, and still says HE came to set the oppressed free.
I am not here to prove myself. I am here to make HIM visible.
🙏 To the one forced to choose between two things you love, GOD sees the choice you never wanted to make.
🙏 To the one standing on cracked ground, HE hears your prayer to mend what is broken.
🙏 To the one who had to walk away from harm, JESUS walked through a hostile crowd too, and HE walks with you.
🙏 To the one carrying someone else's burden today, HE sees every hand that helps.
Grace and Peace.