It’s a word we often say when something stirs deep emotions. It means that something affected us in a profound way.

But why say, “touching?”  Why not just say “moving” or “affecting?” How is it that a word that means “having a common border” or “adjacent” came to signify profound feelings?

Well, why did God come into the world in-person as the God-man Jesus Christ? And when he came, why did he go out among the crowds of hurting persons?

He didn’t sit alone on the top of a hill and expect people to come to him.

He didn’t wait until the age of electronic media and make commercials.

He came to touch and be touched. You could hold him and smell him. You could feel the scratch of his beard on your cheek when he kissed you. Why?

It’s got to mean that we were created to touch and be touched. And that means, the more isolated we are from others, the more “out of touch” we become, and the less we become our truest and best selves.

Of course, not all touching is healthy.

And a few take advantage of our need for touch to satisfy some perverse impulse.

Matthew 9 tells of a woman who’d been hemorrhaging for twelve years. She told herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I’ll be healed.”

She was right, and it’s still true for us.

We have to let him touch us, through worship, Christian community, prayer, and more. The more he touches us, the more we become who he created us to be.