Mark 5:34
He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be cured of your affliction."
Sickness and death are the scariest events for all of us, especially if it affects a loved one or close friend. There is pain in sickness and permanency in death. Both can potentially be life changing for the caregivers and survivors. In the Gospel this weekend from Mark, he shares two stories of faith and healing that profoundly display the supernatural heavenly powers of Jesus. People had heard about Jesus and wanted to see this man, or for the hemorrhaging woman, wanted to be healed. People were desperate. I'm quite sure the synagogue official had been obedient in his prayers, but nothing was working, so he turned to Jesus for help. For the bleeding woman, she had exhausted her savings for a cure, but nothing worked, until her encounter with Jesus. With her strong faith, Jesus proclaimed that it was her faith in him that healed her. Note that he didn't cure everyone that crunched in on him, just her. Then he went to the daughter of Jairus, who had apparently passed away before he arrived. Everyone was already grieving and telling Jesus it was too late. So Jesus commanded all of them to leave except his disciples. They witnessed the saving of the child, literally bringing her back to life. This resurrection if you will, serves as a precursor to the resurrection of Jesus. Jesus showed his believers that he had the power to beat Satan, the evil spirits, and death itself.
All of this was more than 2000 years ago. Yet we still face the same issues of death. Man has not been able to find a magic bullet to prevent death. Science has not found cure for illness. Medicines help treat symptoms and even cure or prevent disease, but at the end of the day, some things can't be fixed. Doctors will end up telling patients to pray and turn to their faith for a cure. This is where we still see modern day miracles. You know the ones…uncurable cancer, then the next visit, the cancer is gone. The doctor operates to get the tumor and there's none to be found. Faith and a total submission to God's will is the cure. Our faith may not give us the result we want immediately, but it was God's will, not yours, that is ultimately the result. It's up to us to learn to accept the healing as a gift from God, and the passing on to our eternal reward as also a gift from God. Pray today for God's will and healing touch for those that are sick or ill in mind, body and spirit.
