“And he said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.’” (Mark 5:36b)
In the passage from Mark’s Gospel, we find a woman who came to Jesus for help. She had a chronic issue of blood that marked her under the Mosaic Law as perpetually unclean. She could not go to the Temple or synagogue, she could not even be around people. She was as unclean as a leper. Therefore she must have been moved by great desperation to go out into a crowd to seek out Jesus. If anyone had recognized her. She would have been further shamed and denounced. But she was powerless over her condition, indeed, she had lost control of her life.
Very often this is where the Lord wants us to be so that our desperation makes us fall at His feet, heedless of those who will see us. He wants us to come to Him with all our problems. He wants us to know that He is the only real hope we have. People will fail us; so will our money and possessions, but Jesus will never fail us. He will not reject us.
Christ has mercy and compassion for the weak, those the world rejects. Jesus loves and accepts those who are despised and rejected by everyone. He loves you and me just the way we are, even when we are sinful, selfish, and disobedient. Not everyone may like us the way we are: parents, spouse, co-workers and plenty of other folks who are always trying to change us. They are often loaded with critical and unkind remarks but short on patience, kindness and constructive help.
Jesus is not one of them. He will not criticize us. He will convict us of our sins, as well as those things we need to change and then He will work to change them. We must trust Him so that in the midst of our grief, fear, pain, helplessness, whatever difficulty we are in, we must admit that we are powerless. This applies to any crisis you can think of: the loss of a loved one, a dreadful and debilitating illness, a horrible accident, terrorism, the loss of a job, confrontations with difficult and cruel people. No matter what the problem, small or great, we can turn to Jesus.
I cannot say that He will take away the problem or change the situation. We can always ask for this without fear or shame. But the answer is up to Him. I do know that He will change us as we pray. He will help us accept the situation and will provide us with the strength and wisdom to endure and get through. He will take us through the pain and the crisis. And even though in this life we will have no end of suffering and crises and problems, we will have the assurance of peace and victory and rest in eternity for we have placed our trust in Jesus.