The Woman with the Issue of Blood: Faithful to the One Who Pressed Through

“When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, ‘If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.’ Immediately her bleeding stopped.” – Mark 5:27-29 (NIV)

Twelve years. She had been bleeding for twelve years, and in that time she had spent everything she had on physicians who had left her no better and in fact considerably worse. By Jewish law, her condition made her ceremonially unclean, which meant that everything she touched was unclean, and anyone who touched her was unclean. She had spent twelve years not only in pain but in a particular kind of social and spiritual isolation that compounded the physical suffering with something close to invisibility.

She should not have been in that crowd. The press of bodies in the street, the contact, the proximity to others, all of it violated the purity regulations she was technically required to observe. She came anyway. She had heard about Jesus, and she pressed through the crowd from behind, reaching through the bodies and the regulations and the shame and the years of disappointment, toward the hem of His garment. She did not ask permission. She did not announce her intention. She simply pressed.

Immediately the bleeding stopped. She felt it in her body. And then Jesus stopped and said: who touched me? His disciples, perplexed by the question in the middle of a pressing crowd, pointed out that many people were touching Him. Jesus said: someone touched me, I know that power has gone out from me. He had felt the specific draw of faith reaching for His hem in the midst of the general press of the crowd. He could tell the difference between a body accidentally brushing against Him and a hand reaching for Him in desperate faith.

Think about the person who has been in the same condition for so long that hope has become genuinely thin. The condition that has cost everything available in the search for a solution. The isolation that has been compounding the pain for longer than anyone knows. The one who is technically not supposed to be in the crowd but has come anyway, because there is nowhere else left to go and nothing left to try and there is a possibility, just a possibility, that this time will be different.

Jesus turned and found her. She fell at His feet, trembling with fear, and told Him the whole truth. And He said: daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering. Not patient. Not anonymous healed person. Daughter. He gave her back the relational identity that twelve years of isolation had stripped from her, and He gave it back publicly, in front of the crowd she had been too unclean to enter.

Today, press through whatever is standing between you and Jesus. The crowd of reasons it probably will not work. The press of years of disappointment. The regulations of shame that say you should not be there. Press anyway. He knows the difference between a body accidentally brushing against Him and a hand reaching in faith. He will stop. He will turn. He will find you.

Prayer

Father, I press through today. Through the crowd of reasons it might not work, through the years of disappointment, through the shame that says I am not qualified to be this close. I reach for the hem of your garment in faith, not because I can explain how it works but because there is nowhere else to go and I believe you are here. Turn and find me. In Jesus’ name, amen.