you are healed

Alone. Always alone.

The bleeding never stopped long enough for her to perform the purification rituals so she was always unclean, always alone. She had spent everything she had on doctors and they were unable to heal her.

She had given up.

she had accepted it. alone.

she saw the crowd following jesus and she fell in behind them. her scarf pulled tight around her pale face, afraid someone might see her. if only she could get to jesus. he could make her well. she knew it. she had heard of his miracles, the people he had healed.

she hung back at the edge of the crowd until it began to surge towards him.

she was carried with the frenzied crowd closer and closer. almost there. she was almost to jesus.

she reached out and her fingers grazed the hem of his robe.

oh. what was that feeling? she couldn’t remember the last time she didn’t feel weak and dizzy. it had been so long since she felt good, but she felt good. she was healed. jesus had healed her. she slid back into the crowd.

“who touched me?” he said.

no one answered, no one stepped forward. the men with him asked him what he meant, there were so many people around. but he wanted to know.

she told him and he looked at her with the kindest eyes she had ever seen and said “your faith has healed you”


i wish my faith was this strong. it is after, all, the same jesus.


mark 5:24-34
so jesus went with him.

a large crowd followed and pressed around him. 25and a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. 26 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. 27 when she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 because she thought, “if i just touch his clothes, i will be healed.” 29 Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.

30 at once jesus realized that power had gone out from him. he turned around in the crowd and asked, “who touched my clothes?”
31 “you see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘who touched me?’ ”

32 but jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. 33 then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. 34 he said to her, “daughter, your faith has healed you. go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”