ON YOUR MARK: WEEK 5 DAY 5

Mark 5: 21-34

21 And when Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered about him, and he was beside the sea. 22 Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him, he fell at his feet 23 and implored him earnestly, saying, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live.” 24 And he went with him.

And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him. 25 And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, 26 and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. 27 She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. 28 For she said, “If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.” 29 And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. 30 And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my garments?” 31 And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’” 32 And he looked around to see who had done it.33 But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. 34 And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

A lot of people follow superstitions. Baseball players jog off the diamond making sure not to step on the chalk lines. People avoid black cats and open ladders. Superstitions are not new, even back in the first century there were many “ideas” about how to cure ailments. 

On His way to visit Jairus’s daughter,  Jesus navigates the crowds and encounters a woman, plagued for twelve years with a bleeding that has led to her being ceremoniously unclean.  Jewish tradition, or superstition, held that such bleeding could be remedied by such treatments as onions boiled in wine, cumin, saffron, or burning an ostrich egg. However, what cures this woman is contact with the hem of Jesus’ clothing and her faith in her Savior.

Jesus sought out the woman and assured her that she was not cured by superstition, or casual contact, but by her faith. He did not embarrass her, but He gave her more gifts than she could imagine. Jesus called her daughter, recognized her faith before the crowd, declared her well, and blessed her.

He does the same for us when we go beyond our own cures and ideas and place our faith completely in Him.