Sweet Tweet

Calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me.”

Mark 8:34

If Jesus had a smartphone, I wonder if “Follow me” would have been His first tweet. It certainly fits within Twitter’s character limits! It’s funny to think about Jesus pulling out His cell phone and typing that message, but you know, I believe He would do just that if He came to earth today. He met people where they were and connected with them in ways they understood. He would definitely be the master tweeter; I’d be very interested in how quickly His follower count would grow.

The crowd Jesus addresses in today’s story was made up of people just like you and me who wanted to see for themselves what was going on with this man they had heard about. The news had spread about His miracles, like healing a deaf man and a blind man and feeding four thousand people with only seven loaves of bread and a few small fish. Not only did everyone there get more than enough to eat, but there were plenty of leftovers, too.

It is amazing how God can do so much with so little! He can communicate volumes with very few words, and He can reach anyone, anywhere, without the power of social media. His ability to reach people at their point of need has always been more spectacular than any man-made media can achieve. I echo the disciple John when he said, “Jesus also did many other things. If they were all written down, I suppose the whole world could not contain the books that would be written” (John 21:25).

Jesus is worth following, and following closely. His messages to us are like sweet tweets that went viral long ago and still bear retweeting.

When I imagine a modern-day crowd all with cell phones listening to Jesus and receiving His sweet tweet invitation to follow Him, I hope everyone is tweeting back, “Yes! I’ll follow” and then retweeting it to all their friends.

Retweet: #Follow Jesus. Or respond to His sweet tweet today.