There are a few accounts of Jesus healing large numbers of people. They don’t say specifically, but the verses seem to imply that he never healed the crowds all at once. No, it seems he healed each person separately.
One at a time.
Most of his healing miracles were simply performed for one person. Just one. And even in the crowds around him, he saw each person.
Why? Why not just wave his holy hand over the crowd and heal the masses? Say the word and be done with it?
Could it be because physical healing wasn’t the point?
Healings were signs, the gospel writers said, pointing to something greater. The one who came to seek and save the lost came to look them in the eye. To love them individually. To heal their souls as well as their bodies.
One at a time.
At sunset, the people brought to Jesus all who had various kinds of sickness, and laying his hands on each one, he healed them.
Luke 4:40
He is the God who appeared to Abraham and the patriarchs, each one at their own time. To the prophets. To a slave girl, weeping in the desert.
He is the God who saw Nathaniel. Noticed Zaccheus. Honored the quiet sister. Felt the gentle tug on his robe.
He who came to redeem the world, yet welcomed a soldier. A foreigner. An outcast woman alone at a well. He touched the leper. Spoke to the blind man. “Take heart,” he said to the paralyzed man.
One at a time.
He welcomed his enemy, offering new birth under cover of darkness; a hushed conversation with the one man, curious.
He found me, alone by Strawberry Creek. I was the one He saw that day and, wondrously, every day since.
In the vast, overwhelming numbers of people on this earth, even the hairs of our heads are numbered. Known, miraculously, by He who knows us all.
One at a time.
It is illogical. Impossible. Unfathomable. My earth-bound mind strains to believe the wonder of it. And yet….I can’t deny the truth of what I’m unable to comprehend.
He sees me. Seeks me. And you too—we who have stilled and quieted our souls in holy awe. He comes to each of us. He comes, and He stays.
One at a time.
“How do you know me?” Nathanael asked. Jesus answered, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.”
John 1:48
Andrea Sanborn 
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