By Russ Ramsey
Today’s text is the story of two daughters—a woman with an issue of blood and Jairus’s little girl. On His way to heal Jairus’s child, Jesus stops to heal this other woman He calls “daughter” (Mark 5:34). But while He was tending to her, the little girl died. Two beautiful truths rise from this text.
First, God is not constrained by time. His timing is not our timing. A day is like a thousand years (2Peter 3:8). It’s impossible math meant to encourage us. It means perceived deadlines might pass—like “Don’t bother, the girl is already gone”—but that is no constraint for God to do exactly what He means to do. With God, it’s never too late.
Second, what God does for someone else has no bearing on His ability to do something for you and me. When God blesses someone else, do you ever feel that because He did it for them, He won’t do it for you? What God does for the bleeding woman has no bearing on His ability to attend to Jairus’s needs. We’re talking, of course, about comparison. Don’t compare your situation to someone else’s, as if what God has done for someone else has anything to do with what He means to do for you. The Father knows what you need, Jesus tells us.
The best thing we can do—even in our most unclean, undesirable condition—is to move toward Jesus. He will not turn you away. Like the bleeding woman, we come to Jesus desperate. We come needy. But when the unclean woman touched Jesus, she didn’t make Him unclean, but the opposite happened—His power took away her impurity.
Sometimes this means entering with Him into your rooms of sorrow and death. When Jairus’s friends tell him, “Your daughter is dead. Why bother the teacher anymore?” (Mark 5:25) Jesus intervenes by saying He can wake her. What Jesus asks Jarius and his wife to do is to trust that He will turn their mourning into joy.
Think about the scene. When Jesus asks Jarius and his wife to go with Him to the girl’s bedside, He’s asking them to enter into the saddest place on earth for them. What are those places for you? To enter into the hope Christ offers is to follow Him into the places of our deepest pain, acknowledging through even our tears that Jesus is no stranger to places like these. And He isn’t.
The bleeding woman and Jairus both came to Jesus with immediate problems that spoke to a deeper level of brokenness. This side of glory, there is no shortage of sad things. But the specific healing Jesus gave them was a foretaste of a much greater, ultimate healing that is the destiny of the people of God. Because this is so, draw near to Him in your sorrow now. Do not numb yourself, but through prayer, Scripture, and community, drink from the fountain of truth.
It’s not too late for you. He’s got you. And He loves you. Rest in that, and trust Him.
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