Daily Reading 20

"There was a woman in the crowd who had had a hemorrhage for twelve years." -Mark 5:25

"Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering." -Mark 5:34

What kind of hands do you have? This woman's hands were the hands of a public outcast. She wasn't wanted around because she was too sick. Bleeding all the time. The way Max Lucado describes her hands - they probably hadn't been touched by another person for a long time. She was on her knees crawling after Jesus when she saw him walking through town. She and a bunch of others had heard about him and were following him around. She came homeless, poor, sick, and probably with little hope left.
Whispers had told her that there was something that this Jesus could do, that he was different. She literally had nothing to lose, so why not try? Why not do something desperate? She thinks to herself, "If I can just touch his clothing, I will be healed." -Mark 5:28. Even though the crowd told her to move out of the way; even though she kept getting jostled by them, she moved closer. Then when she got close enough, she reached out and grabbed his robe.
She realized instantly that "the bleeding had stopped, and she could feel that she had been healed." -Mark 5:29. She had LIFE again. He gave her LIFE.
The cool thing is, he knew that it had happened. He tried to find her in the middle of the huge crowd to let her know that her act of faith was what made her better.
Life can sometimes be full of a bunch of crappy stuff that makes us feel really weak. We don't feel much hope when something takes our strength away. Maybe it is a family situation? A job that we feel like we have to keep doing? Maybe its a choice that we keep making that we wish we'd never even started? I don't know what might be making you feel weak. I do hear from this message though, that Jesus wants to hold our hands. When we reach through all of the people, he knows. "Yours is the hand he loves to hold."