The Conduit | Ed’s Inspirations
Mark 5:24-34
24 Jesus went with him, and all the people followed, crowding around him. 25 A woman in the crowd had suffered for twelve years with constant bleeding. 26 She had suffered a great deal from many doctors, and over the years she had spent everything she had to pay them, but she had gotten no better. In fact, she had gotten worse. 27 She had heard about Jesus, so she came up behind him through the crowd and touched his robe. 28 For she thought to herself, “If I can just touch his robe, I will be healed.”29 Immediately the bleeding stopped, and she could feel in her body that she had been healed of her terrible condition. 30 Jesus realized at once that healing power had gone out from him, so he turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my robe?” 31 His disciples said to him, “Look at this crowd pressing around you. How can you ask, ‘Who touched me?’” 32 But he kept on looking around to see who had done it. 33 Then the frightened woman, trembling at the realization of what had happened to her, came and fell to her knees in front of him and told him what she had done. 34 And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Your suffering is over.”
This week my Chilliwack prayer walk started in Abbotsford. I was waiting for someone in the entrance atrium at the Abbotsford Regional Hospital when I heard gorgeous, stirring music coming from the piano. The pianist, our Irene Abrahms was inspired and the sound was a pure stream that flowed with Holy Spirit. My heart was set on vivid alert, it happened so fast, I was surprised and a bit unprepared for the wave of pain, a sense of loss and a spirit of mourning which engulfed me. Hospitals and the people in them are acquainted with suffering. I felt it.
A bit over a year ago my sister-in-law passed away at too young an age, a lingering death where she experienced much mental anguish. When I was 10 years old my mom called to me, the words she called to me knocked me breathless, a suffocating terror that compelled my 10 year old self to seek God in that moment. My 19 year old cousin had been in a bad car accident and died 6 hours later. Our close family of 22, uncles, aunts, cousins, Grandpa, Grandma, and my own family of 7 were shell-shocked. Loss careened into our extended family. This was life at its most alive, not good alive, but painful alive. When this kind of loss rolls into your house it garners your attention like nothing else. I wondered then, how would we survive this grief, how would we get through this.
When the woman touched the hem of Jesus’s garment the power of healing went out of Him, He noticed, with a “Who touched me”? This was of course divine power, the power of love, compassion, empathy and healing. The life giving power of God harnessed through the One fully human to heal and make right a wrong. I love the way Jesus became aware of the tug of a heart, the tug of faith and what He did after that. He wanted to know who it was, He wanted to come face to face with this person. He kept asking even when his friends wrote off his interest.
After her 12 year experience as an untouchable because of her condition, He restored her to full human status. She went from “unclean” written on her heart to restoration and belonging. This may have been the first time in perhaps over a decade that she heard tender words spoken to her by a man.
There is no corner of our town(Chilliwack) that hasn’t been touched by pain and loss. My prayer is that we would look after people here, that in our encounters with people we would be sensitized to their needs, that we would feel the power of God move out into real people. Could we be conduits of God's tender heart to those we meet and bear witness to God’s delight in showing His unfailing love.