Taking the Risk

Today's Daily Reading is from Stasi's new book The Ladder of Love, available now — order your copy today!

Many of you will recall the story of the woman with the issue of blood, as recounted in Mark 5. I love to imagine the day she encountered Jesus— up close and personal. It was a hot, dry, dusty day. The marketplace was buzzing with a simmering excitement. The word had spread that the man Jesus had just come across the lake, and Jairus, a leader of the synagogue, was with Him.

Jairus had not only met Jesus as He arrived, but he had fallen down at Jesus’s feet and asked Him, begged Him really, to come with him to his home and heal his little daughter, for she was dying.

Jesus, being Himself, said yes and went.

But remember, He didn’t go alone, did He? He was surrounded by a throng of people going with them. He was being jostled, pushed against, and prodded when suddenly He stopped and asked the seemingly ridiculous question, “Who touched me?”

A woman came forward. She too fell at His feet, and the Scriptures say she told Him her whole truth. She told Him her whole story. She had been bleeding for twelve years. She had seen every doctor, done every treatment, and spent every dime. She was getting worse. She knew in her heart that if she could just touch Jesus, touch merely the hem of His garment, that she would be healed. So she pressed on, and against all odds and against the law (for a woman to be in public bleeding was against the law, as was touching a man), she was instantly healed.

What was Jesus’s response to this woman? Was He irritated by her presumption? No. You know He was not. He was pleased. He recognized her as one of His own. He called her daughter. He said that her faith had healed her, and He told her to go in peace.

Friends, her faith in what healed her?

It was her faith that she could come to Jesus with all that she was as a woman and all that she wasn’t, and He would not turn her away. She could come to Him with her brokenness and shame, with the truth of her whole story, and He would not withhold His love from her.

It was true. It remains true.

Even if you have been bleeding for much longer than twelve years.

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