DEVOTIONAL | SHANNON MILLER
Let’s consider today the story of the woman with the issue of blood. When we meet her in the Gospels, she had already “suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse,” (Mark 5:26, NIV). In modern terms, she had gone to the Mayo Clinic or Johns Hopkins, tried the best treatments out there, and had finally been told there was nothing they could do for her. How many times had her hopes risen and been dashed again? How many times had she thought herself on the way out of the deep, only to be plunged back in? The darkest moment of her story was not when she first faced this trial, but when all her most promising solutions failed.
Can you relate? Like a late frost in spring, has disappointment struck down your budding hopes, and left you to wonder how a harvest could still come from the seeds you sowed in tears?
After twelve years of sickness and isolation, she heard that there was a divine Healer in town. She was done grasping for practical cures, and now she reached for the hem of His garment. We don’t know how much she had already prayed and sought the Lord’s help, but we do know that this turned out to be her day. She was instantly healed, and in place of reproach for her touch that would have made a rabbi ceremonially unclean, she received the honor of being the only woman in Scripture whom Jesus named “Daughter.” (See Luke 8:43-48.)
Are you in the starless night of your story, having exhausted all your best ideas and most promising hopes for a way out of your suffering? “If you are walking in darkness, without a ray of light, trust in the Lord and rely on your God,” (Isaiah 50:10, NLT). When there’s nothing you can do, there is still nothing He can’t do. You are not out of options and your story is not over, so long as you are willing to reach for the hem of His garment.
Recent Comments