Mark 6:30-34
The apostles gathered together with Jesus
and reported all they had done and taught.
He said to them,
“Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.”
People were coming and going in great numbers,
and they had no opportunity even to eat.
So they went off in the boat by themselves to a deserted place.
People saw them leaving and many came to know about it.
They hastened there on foot from all the towns
and arrived at the place before them.
When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd,
his heart was moved with pity for them,
for they were like sheep without a shepherd;
and he began to teach them many things.
“People were coming . . . in great numbers . . . the vast crowd”
Have you ever wondered how a “vast crowd” could hear Jesus’ words?
In Luke 9’s account of Jesus’ multiplication of a few loaves and fishes to feed the huge crowd who came to listen to Him, we are told that “the men there numbered about five thousand.” (Luke 9:14)
How did a crowd of 5,000 manage to hear Jesus without the devices of modern technology of microphone, speakers, and amplifiers?
That surely was a miracle unreported in the Gospels.
A woeful characteristic of the Gospels is how sketchy their accounts were. There is no physical description of Jesus the Christ — not His hair color, eye color, or how tall He was.
The accounts are succinct, using an economy of words.
But we are told in Mark 6 that in a non-technological age wherein news was communicated mainly via word of mouth, multitudes of people “from all the towns” got word of Jesus going to a place. So eager were they to see and hear Him, they arrived “on foot” even before Jesus and the Apostles.
Today’s so-called superstars who fill sports stadiums cannot begin to be compared to our Lord.
And may the peace and love of Jesus Christ our Lord be with you,
~E
