Lent 2026 Day 17: Mon 9 Mar
Mark 5:24b-29
24 …and a large crowd followed and pressed around Him. 25 And a woman was there who had suffered from bleeding for twelve years. 26 She had borne much agony under the care of many physicians and had spent all she had, but to no avail. Instead, her condition had only grown worse. 27 When the woman heard about Jesus, she came up through the crowd behind Him and touched His cloak. 28 For she kept saying, “If only I touch His garments, I will be healed.” 29 Immediately her bleeding stopped, and she sensed in her body that she was healed of her affliction.
Faith is the link between this woman and the ongoing journey with Jairus to see his daughter. One might argue that the woman had come to the end of her tether – no physician seemed to be able to help her in her condition. She was a woman with a woman’s problem, and I’m not sure whether the male (they were most likely male) physicians knew or perhaps even wanted to know about such things. They took her money, however, but she was no better. There really was nothing else she could do.
In times of extreme anguish, we can either fall into desperation (all hope lost), or we can summon up the remaining hope into action. The woman had lost all hope in the physicians – they’d proved their hopelessness. She did not turn to Jesus as a desperate hope. It is true that many people have turned to Jesus in extreme situations when hope has failed them, and Jesus has acted, to their surprise and amazement. She turned to Jesus in the knowledge that he actually could do something for her. And she did that in an amazing way.
She did not shout out to Jesus in the street. That would have been improper and shameful for her, an unclean woman, an indignity for Jesus and, for that matter, the crowd. She reasoned instead. Her first thought was not “if I touch…”. It was “This man is my last, my only hope”. She had to approach him, but it had to be in an unobtrusive way. If Jesus could heal her then she could save her dignity and shame by some stealth move. She, an unclean woman, couldn’t touch Jesus directly, either. So, her plan was to touch his garments. Nothing more, no skin contact, no shame, no bothering the Master, no humiliation. It was literally touch and go.
Carefully she made her way towards Jesus from behind, pushing her way through the crowd. That would not have been easy. “If I touch, if I just touch, if I just reach out my hand, my index finger, on his robe, on the material…”. She came closer. “I will be healed: I will be healed.”. and she came close enough to touch Jesus and withdraw. She touched him.
Healing and cleanness spread through her whole body. The bleeding stopped, and inside her all that was unwell or diseased was put right and refreshed. She was a new woman. Time now to get out of here!
But there were some loose ends that needed tying up first.
Do you have a condition that you’ve suffered for twelve or more years? Could Jesus deal with it?
Father God, I am amazed at the faith of this unnamed woman. You know her and love her, and you know me and my condition, my health, my heart, my desires, my hopes, my lack of faith. I surrender them all to you that you may restore me to be the person you created me to be. Amen.
Paul