Good Friday Reading: The Sick Woman Healed by Jesus

Jesus healed many people during his ministry, and most of them are not named. I am one of them. It's not important that you know my name. What's important is that you realize that Jesus healed me-that it was the power of God flowing through him that accomplished something that no one else had been able to do; that it was the power of God that changed my life.

The focus of my story is Jesus.

But you need to know something about my life to understand what he did for me.

You may not know my name, but you probably have heard about me. I am known as the woman who had a bleeding problem for 12 years, a problem that the doctors could not heal. Compared with raising people from the dead or feeding 4000 and 5000 people with just a little food, the healing of a bleeding problem may not seem like much.

But it was for me!

There was the inconvenience of an ongoing problem.
There was the embarrassment of trying to explain what was wrong and not knowing.
There was the money I spent on doctors who did not make things better, but only worse.

Then I heard about Jesus.
I heard about the miracles he had performed.
I could see in him a love and compassion...and power that I had never experienced before.

I knew he could help me...if he only he would.

But how could I get close to him?
Everywhere he went, people crowded around him and demanded his attention.
Who was I?
Why should he listen to me?

So I determined that I would not talk to him.

One day, I came up behind him and reached out and touched his robe.
I thought, "If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed."
And I was!
I could feel it immediately.
Something had changed.
The bleeding had stopped!

And that wasn't all.
Somehow Jesus knew what I had done, and asked, "Who touched my clothes?"
People crowded around him, and he knew that someone had deliberately, for a purpose, touched his clothing.

Looking at me, he said, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering."
Twelve years of suffering and twelve years of money wasted on doctors, and it was that simple.
A touch!

But of course it wasn't simple.

This Jesus: He was more than just a man.
He had to be.
As I reached out to him, he reached out to me and I've never been the same again.

When our leaders got the Romans to crucify Jesus, I knew that I should be there at the cross to honor the one who had honored me through his compassion:
The one who made a difference in my life deserved my respect.
There was one more thing that Jesus did for me that I haven't mentioned.

The law of God said that a condition like mine meant that I was separated from God, and as long as the bleeding continued, I stayed separated from God.

I don't fully understand that, but I knew that the only way I could be as close to God as possible was to be healed physically.
Jesus did that for me.
Jesus, whoever he was and whatever he was, was the one who brought me fully to God.
As I think of him hanging on the cross, I wonder how many others were brought to God through him ministry.

He brought me peace.

Has he brought you peace?