Come to Jesus
[Jesus] said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.” Mark 5:34
Twelve years is a long time to wait for healing. The unnamed woman whose story is recorded in three gospels “had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse” (Mark 5:26). Was she hopeful? Was she bitter? The gospel writers don’t say. But she was desperate enough to take a risk.
She would have been a social outcast—forbidden to go to the temple because she was ceremonially unclean (See Leviticus 15:25–31). Anything or anyone she touched was also considered unclean. How solitary her life must have been.
Still, when she heard Jesus was nearby, she pushed through the huge crowd that surrounded him. If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed, she thought (Mark 5:28).
And she was right.
As soon as she touched his garment, “her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering” (v. 29).
Jesus, of course, knew what had happened, but he stopped and asked, “Who touched my clothes?” (v. 30). He wasn’t angry. He was filled with compassion. He didn’t want the woman to slink away in shame or guilt. He wanted to honor her faith.
She came to him “trembling with fear” and “told him the whole truth” (v. 33). He blessed her, assuring her that her suffering along with her shame and sadness were gone (v. 34).
The woman threw aside common sense and societal norms to get to Jesus. She then overcame her fear and revealed the “whole truth” to him. And he honored her faith by healing her—physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
What does that say to you and me? Come to Jesus. Reach out. Make contact. He responds to the connection. And, like this desperate woman, he will have compassion on us and provide the healing we need.
DIG DEEPER:
Read Mark 5:21–43. Jesus was on his way to raise Jairus’s daughter from the dead when he encountered this woman. How is the woman’s situation similar to Jairus’s? How is it different?
Read another account of this miracle in Luke 8:41–48. What does Luke add about the crowd and Peter?
Read Hebrews 11:6 and 12:1–2. How did the woman in Mark 5 live out the truth of these verses? How can you live our your faith today?
Denise K. Loock
This devotion is part of a series on Women of the Bible.