Who Touched Me? Part 2

The beach was indiscernible.  The crowd was so thick that the only grains of sand that could be seen were those swept unto the roadside about three hundred feet back from the shore.  Step by step, she leaned against the boulders that defined the landscape on the other side of the road.  She would have to push her way through the crowd to reach Him.  She had already pushed her way through waves of embarrassment.  She stirred up her belief that His hand could heal her in order to dismiss the knowledge that her appearance betrayed her neediness.  

Half way to her destination, her weakness brought her to her knees.  “O God, don’t let them crush me!” she whispered, “…so close.”  She couldn’t move for a very long moment.  Her bleeding had quickened and she was certain that it had by now soaked through her garments in some places.  She dared not look.  It felt as though even her veins were quivering and certainly she would pass out and be consumed by footprints.  Quiet.  Voices were calling in all directions but quiet suddenly hung over the persons in her area.  “He’s coming this way,” one said.  “Shhh, I want to hear Him,” said another.  “Jesus!” someone called emotionally from behind her.  “If I touch even his garments, I will be made well,” Mark 5:28.  And as she saw His sandals only a short distance from her place, she gathered her shaken vessel from the dust, stepped forward and brushed the back of His cloak with her fingertips.  It was enough!  She stood mesmerized by the power of love that washed through physical nature and closed the door to infirmity.  “And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease,” Mark 5:29.  

The crowd kept pressing towards Him but she could only tremble.  “And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my garments?’” Mark 5:30.  Her tongue clung to the roof of her dry mouth.  The disciples looked perplexed.  They didn’t understand His question.  Lots of people were touching Him!  “And his disciples said to him, ‘You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say: Who touched me?’  And he looked around to see who had done it.  But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth.  And he said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease’,” Mark 5:31-34.