Short Reflections on John 6

This Morning I was listening to John Gillespie's reflections on John 6, He drew about many things I hadn't noticed before. John does a pretty impressive thing when he preaches by seemingly going deep but infact just illuminating simple truths to the listener. So I am just shortly going to bring out some things that he mentioned and add my own observations The most interesting points for me were drawn from the famous account of Jesus walking on water shortly after the feeding of the 5000. Im going to use Marks account of this for the first section below: Mark 6: 45Immediately Jesus made His disciples get into the boat and go ahead of Him to the other side to Bethsaida, while He Himself was sending the crowd away. 46After bidding them farewell, He left for the mountain to pray.47When it was evening, the boat was in the middle of the sea, and He was alone on the land. 48Seeing them straining at the oars, for the wind was against them, The first thing that I have read over before is the fact that Jesus saw them with super-natural vision, though he was on a mountaintop it would have been impossible to see them in a small rowing boat in the middle of the sea (Johns gosepl places them 3 or 4 miles out to sea), and the immediate and simple realisation for us as Christians is that when Jesus has sent us, and we dont see him like we saw him before (eg for the disciples he was no longer physically with them) he is ever present, he sees us however far away we percieve ourselves to be from him. This is a simple but beautiful truth for the Christian. Back into John's account from Verse 18 18The sea began to be stirred up because a strong wind was blowing. 19Then, when they had rowed about three or four miles, they *saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near to the boat; and they were frightened. 20But He *said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” 21So they were willing to receive Him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going. It would be enough if any of us saw somebody we know walking on the sea at night to give us a scare, but JG notes a Jewish Myth that the jew would see a ghost shortly before death. Then an amazing thing happens Jesus gets in the boat, and the boat miraculously is taken to the destination, often in my own life I can see how I have struggled to do, conquer, achieve something and felt like I was failing and so far from where I wanted to be, when I gave up on my own strength and let Jesus come into the situation, my destination had been achieved by that very act. The most interesting insight JG had for this passage was that the boat and disciples are actually a prophetic or eschatological picture of the Church, floundering and failing in the World and Jesus comes to them to calm their fear, and supernaturally, and miraculously transports them to their destination through Grace, overcoming the natural hinderances of all the situations that Churches are bothered by, just by his prescence.