It’s a new day, but the this issue, coming from inside me, feels very old. It’s a habit of my mind, a pattern of thinking, deeply ingrained. It leaves me exhausted, and anxious. It reeks of self and pride. Forgiveness has been asked for and given, yet here I am again.

This is what I’m coming with when I sit to read in Mark this morning. Here to meet me is the woman with the relentless flow of blood. Yes, I scratch in my journal, This pours out of me. I feel powerless to staunch it. I am desperate to feel free of this that is unclean before the holiness of God.

The woman thought If I could touch Him… and things were set in motion.

Jesus came near, moving in the eye of a cloud of people, dust and noise. There – the sight of him flashed up ahead – then she lost sight – then He appeared again. She moved toward Him, undaunted, using the crowd’s distraction to her advantage, using the fact that no one would touch her to push her away, unclean as she was. There He was, and she was close enough.

Touch Him.

The thought became hope, the hope spread its wings, and the wings carried her beyond herself as hope is known to do. Her arm shot out like a bird from its cage, her hand landed on the hem of his garment, and her fingers plucked the fringe there.

Jesus halted. The crowd stepped on each other and his disciples must have back-pedaled. “Who touched me?” he asked.

While his disciples questioned the question, the woman stood behind Him, her arms wrapped round herself. Clean. Her hidden shame, her indellible stain, had been touched and lifted. She held tight, embraced her miracle inside, even as Jesus’ question fell on her hearing.

Tell Him. Her arms lowered and she went trembling to His feet.

Her answer was her story, I’m sure a gush of words, and I wonder if it was in the telling that her faith found its voice.

“Daughter,” Jesus responded, telling her everything, “Your faith has saved you.” The Greek word for this is “sozo,” also translated- “made you whole.” With this, Jesus named for her the what had happened in her heart.

This morning there is this story of a woman, Jesus, and the question He asks. It occurs to me that Jesus asked a lot of questions.

It occurs to me, too, that with every question it is as if the world around should pause and listen, and maybe hold its breath – sacred space is being made for someone’s faith to find its voice, take life, expand. A door swings open somewhere, unseen.

In the quiet of this scene and the echo of Jesus’ words, I remember learning that my faith has saved me and makes me whole, not in itself, “But by,” the words of a teacher coming back to me now, “…what it causes me to do.”

This thing I want to live free of, brings me to Him, and a question falls on my hearing, now -

What will your faith cause you to do, here, with this, today?

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