Editor’s Note: In honor of International Women’s Day (March 8), Women’s History Month in the United States, and the Lenten season, we will be publishing devotions written by women about the women who Jesus ministered to during his time on earth. This series will be called, “The Women Jesus Loved.”
We will be publishing the devotions on Mondays and Thursdays up until Passion Week. We hope you will return each week to see how Jesus loves all of us, including women. This is the third in the series. Read the other entries here.
Have you ever experienced a trial that left you feeling like your life was being drained away? Day after day, the affliction rears its ugly head to chip away at your confidence and zest for life?
At the beginning of last year, I started cramping, vomiting, and then the heavy bleeding began. At first, I refused to see a doctor, believing that this was just an irregular period and something that would heal on its own. I have always been relatively healthy – surely, I was strong enough to fight this!
The bleeding didn’t stop. It got heavier and heavier. For months, I stubbornly grimaced through life with an invisible thorn that tormented me day and night. Until one day I found myself being whisked into the hospital’s emergency room with a battered body and a broken spirit. Maybe I’m not strong enough to fight this.
It’s taken me some time to voice my experience with others. In many ways, women’s health is still a taboo and foreign topic. How do you explain an invisible battle? How do you answer the hundredth person who asks when you’re finally going to have a baby? How do you grieve an intangible loss? For months, I felt like I was stuck in a pit of grief and guilt, until one day, the Bleeding Woman showed up to pull me back into the light.
The story of the Bleeding Woman is recorded in the gospels of Mark 5, Matthew 9 and Luke 8. I believe that her story is included in the Bible because God honors the unique challenges of women’s health. While issues of fertility and bleeding may make people squirm, the Bible honors the Bleeding Woman with a remarkable story of faith, hope, and redemption.
In the gospels, we learn that the Bleeding Woman suffered and bled for twelve long years. Despite using all her savings on medical fees, she was never healed.
“She had 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)
To make matters worse, she lived in a time where her medical condition would have rendered her ritually ‘unclean’ (Leviticus 15:25-27), and anyone who touched her would become unclean as well. As news of her condition traveled across town, she would have been left socially and spiritually isolated. As gossip and fear spread, people would have avoided her like the plague. Bleeding and bankrupt – what hope is left for this woman?
Now this woman had never met Jesus, but she most likely would have heard of him from the reports of others. Jesus was gaining popularity through his miraculous healing and willingness to associate with those who were ‘unclean’: lepers, tax collectors, and even sinners (Matthew 9:11). Despite her suffering, the Bleeding Woman had faith in Jesus’ power and believed with certainty that she would be healed if she was to touch the edge of his cloak.
“If only I touch his cloak, I will be healed.” (Matthew 9:20)
One day, Jesus walks through her hometown and he becomes smothered by large crowds of people. It would have been a chaotic scene and the opportune moment for the desperate patient to sneak in unnoticed. She reaches out in faith, and with a single touch of his cloak, she is immediately healed from suffering.
“Immediately her bleeding stopped, and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.”
As someone who was quick to harden my heart in suffering, I admire her faith and conviction. She had faith that what was impossible for human doctors was possible for God, the Great Physician. While I bitterly accused God of being a life-taker, the Bleeding Woman had sure faith that Jesus was a life-giver. With a single touch, she is healed and freed from suffering.
“At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?” (Mark 5:30)
But what actually makes this story interesting is that Jesus intentionally stops to identify this woman.
As Jesus was surrounded by such a large crowd, the disciples are perplexed by the question and tried to usher him onward to tend to more important matters. However, as Jesus insists on identifying the woman she fearfully falls to his feet and comes clean with the truth.
“Then the woman knowing what had happened to her came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth.” (Mark 5:33)
Unlike Adam and Eve, who after eating the forbidden fruit hid from God and blamed one another, the Bleeding Woman publicly confesses her actions. She is willing to accept the consequences of touching Jesus while ritually unclean. I imagine her to be trembling on the floor, publicly exposed, and expectant of judgment and condemnation. But instead, this woman is washed with words of love and mercy:
“Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.” (Mark 5:34)
I believe that these words are the pinnacle of Jesus’ miracle and show us the primary goal of his ministry on earth. Her physical healing is merely a precursor to a greater spiritual healing. While a physical healing is miraculous, the peace that comes from good health is merely temporary. We all live in mortal and finite bodies that are subject to decay and death. The greater miracle in this story is her spiritual healing and the receiving of a new spiritual identity. She who was once unwelcome in society is now welcomed into the kingdom of God. She who was once unnamed and unknown is now a “Daughter” a divine status that secures eternal peace between herself and God.
I still remember the day that these tender promises began to chip away at my hardened heart. Although my weakened body felt useless and broken, I was reminded that my soul is unbreakable. I am a daughter of Jesus who himself shed blood to make me whole. Even though Jesus healed the Bleeding Woman amidst large crowds of adoring fans, his life ended with betrayal, desertion and a humiliating death on a criminal cross. The death of an innocent man is a tragic reality, but in that moment, the Great Physician performed his greatest miracle of conquering death so that his patients could receive the gift of eternal life.
What gives me hope is that regardless of the changes to my body and the uncertainty of my future, one thing remains the same: I am God’s daughter. With every drop of blood, I remind myself that Jesus has shed more. With every pang of loneliness, I remind myself that Jesus is with me and for me. He was with me when I panicked in the hospital. He was with me when I wept alone on the bedroom floor. Like everyone else, my withering and mortal body is subject to decay and death but he promises to sustain me until the day he returns to bring me home.
There will be a day when Jesus returns, and my life will be called to account before a holy judge. While I’ll be tempted to hide in the shadows, his light will expose every motivation, thought, and deed. I may try to even the scales with my measly record of ‘good works’, but before a holy throne, even my best work will leave me smelling like filthy rags. Yet instead of facing condemnation and exclusion from God’s kingdom, I will be washed clean with words of divine mercy: “Daughter, your faith has healed you.”
Immediately, my rags will be replaced with robes of righteousness. I will be welcomed to join in on the chorus of the saints as they praise God for his grace and mercy – and next to the lepers, tax collectors, sinners, and the Bleeding Woman, I will walk with a new body into an eternity where sickness, sin, and death will be no more.
Now isn’t that the greatest hope and miracle of all?
Read more of our “The Women Jesus Loved” series here.