there's this woman …
she's quite ill, suffering from some sort of bleeding for 12 years…
she's exhausted her finances, trying to find some form of healing…
she's traumatized
there's this man, named Jesus, and the word is that he's been healing people…
there's this day that Jesus comes close, across the sea, and she hears of it and makes her way there…
there's this crowd, bustling, no doubt all anxious to see, and maybe hear, and maybe receive healing…
but she is desperate - "I have to get to him! "
there's the struggle to weave her way to him, jostled, pushed, pushing, amid the mobbish mass… she persists…her hurting is too great to let this be taken away…
"I must get to him!! " ..
"There! I see him! "…
squeezing her way through, she is pressed on every side, and just as she nears him she falls from the press…
undeterred, just behind him as he pauses, she is within arm's reach of his feet, and reaches out between the sandaled feet of the throngers, touching the fringe of his clothing…
!!!! instantly it's stopped…
her entire world stopped in abject astoundment by the interposition of an otherworldly force in this man…
she stopped bleeding out on that spot, in that instant, for her infirmity had been healed…
trauma displaced…
Creator had healed her?
yes indeed
..
a poignant consideration evolves…
? did Jesus heal this woman without intending?
there was no aforethought in the mind of Jesus that he would encounter and heal this woman this day
not even just prior…
it happened apart from his knowing
GodFather had given him no 'warning', no heads-up, no direction…
this is markedly different from Jesus' purposeful interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well, or his intentional visit with the lame man at the pool of Bethesda
he had no idea…
how on earth does that work?
he healed the sickened, purposefully he fed the hungry, purposefully he even raised the dead
purposefully
with intent
…
how is it that he healed her unintentionally?
his mind not engaged
his will not directed
how is that even possible?
apparently this was an unusual occurrence, given the tone of the text…
Jesus, immediately she was healed, asks "who touched me?!" ...
the mere posing of the question raises questions in our mind ("isn't this God?" being one)… we expect him to know, and further, to have known before the deed…
of course the disciples are taken back by his question – "how do you expect us to know that? we are crowded-in on every side"…
Jesus then says "I felt power go out of me "…
somehow, without expecting it, something integral to who Jesus is was unexpectedly subtracted, shared, given out, taken…
and it surprised him…
imagine the integrity of this person who did not rely on his divinity or divine influence, but by the sheer integrity of his humanity was fully able to bring healing naturally, almost as natural as breathing…
this incident, in my mind, challenges us to investigate our own being, to find our inner core and see if we ourselves live out of a natural compassion for our human relations, a compassion forged in the godly fire of love
like Jesus does
peace to you
