Jesus sees our suffering

One of my favourite Biblical characters is the woman who’s been bleeding for 12 years before she meets Jesus.

According to Mosaic Law, women who were ceremonially unclean weren’t allowed to touch anyone. For those long years blood had flowed from this woman’s body, making her physically sick and socially unacceptable. The physicians of her time were unable to relieve her suffering.

We meet her in Mark 5. At the time she appears, Jesus is on his way to the home of Jairus, a man who’d asked Jesus to go and heal his sick, dying daughter. A large crowd is pressing around him. Mark 5:25-29 recounts what happened as Jesus walks through the throng…

“A woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She 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. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, ‘If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.’ Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.”

In a beautiful series of events, Jesus engages with the woman, invites her to share her story with him, and tells her that her faith has healed her. His final words to her are: “Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

Go in peace and be freed from your suffering… How we long for Jesus to say these words to us.

But this wasn’t some ‘overnight sensation’, even though it sure was sensational and miraculous. This woman had been suffering for 12 long years… a social outcast, all her money drained by failed ‘quick-fix cures’. All her hopes, seemingly dashed… Until the Son of God shows up – and her faith springs into action.

She battles the crowds, reaches for his cloak – and she is healed. It was totally unacceptable by society’s standards to be doing what she did – leaving her home in her unclean state, pushing through the throng and touching this God-Man. But she did. She was a desperate woman on a mission. And not only is she healed of her sickness, but the God of the Universe steps into her world and hears her story.

Have you ever felt like a social outcast? Perhaps the shame of something that happened long ago still has its grip on you… Maybe you don’t feel worthy of the people in your life… or even  the love and forgiveness of Jesus. Perhaps an ongoing illness has isolated you, or you’re struggling with a daily battle that no-one else around you seems to understand. Maybe you’ve been on your rocky path for more years than you can remember.

We all feel lonely sometimes – abandoned, rejected, blamed, misunderstood…

But when we know that Jesus is not just ‘in town’ but able to take up residence in our lives, we have every reason to run, skirts flying, faith soaring, as desperate people on a mission to discover freedom. Not for freedom’s sake, but for the cause of receiving healing from God himself, and letting others know just how amazing and wonderful and glorious he is.

May our hearts fill up and overflow with faith like this woman’s. May we believe that God can do anything. In fact he’s already done it. Jesus won the victory through dying and coming to life again after death (proving that he is indeed God). He’s shown us that we can be “more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37). He’s shown us that no problem, no issue, no shame… is too great for him to help us deal with.

What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus

Oh precious is the flow that makes me white as snow
No other fount I know
Nothing but the blood of Jesus
Nothing but the blood of Jesus

This is all my righteousness
Nothing but the blood of Jesus
This is all my hope and peace
Nothing but the blood of Jesus

Oh precious is the flow that makes me white as snow
No other fount I know
Nothing but the blood of Jesus

Oh precious is the flow that makes me white as snow
No other fount I know
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

(Lyrics and music by Robert Lowry (1826-1899)