A woman suffering hemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him and touched the tassel on his cloak. She said to herself, “If only I can touch his cloak, I shall be cured.” Jesus turned around and saw her, and said, “Courage, daughter! Your faith has saved you.” And from that hour the woman was cured.
I wrote about this same miracle from Mark’s gospel last week, where I talked about how God uses our afflictions to bring us to Him and to help out others along the way. But in both cases, the person asking Jesus to help his daughter, and the woman suffering from hemorrhages share one thing in common – trust in Jesus.
Trust. Why is it so hard to trust in someone else? And in seeing what God has done over the millennia, why is it so hard to trust in Him? Why is it so hard to let go and trust in Jesus, the One who was raised from the dead? More often than not, we put our trust into one thing, and one thing only – ourselves. Or if we want to trust in God, we try to make a deal with Him. “If you help me Lord, if you do this for me Jesus, I will trust in you.” How many times do we say this, and try to make this deal with God?
Jacob says this in Genesis today –“If God remains with me, to protect me on this journey I am making and to give me enough bread to eat and clothing to wear, and I come back safe to my father’s house, the LORD shall be my God.”
And then the hemorrhaging woman in the Gospel says to herself, “If only I can touch his cloak, I shall be cured.”
We want to see signs and miracles and amazing things before we believe. As I’ve written before, I get like this from time to time, where I am that Doubting Thomas who needs to see and touch the wounds.
I remember last year, I was learning how to swim. I went 37 years of my life without knowing how to swim. I’m not a great swimmer yet and I hope to get back to lesson and practice someday so I can build my skills and be able to swim for fitness, but I do have much more comfort and confidence in the water and can save myself now. But I remember those first few lessons, my body was so rigid, and I was straining to stay afloat. I was just simply trying to keep my head above water, and the more I tensed up, the more I sunk. The first thing you really must do is learn to float on your back and get more comfort, but I was so tense and afraid of sinking that I just could not relax – and I would sink.
It was only when my wife (who is an excellent swimmer and was my instructor) gave me some of the most profound advice I have ever received, advice that I continue to apply to other aspects in my life. She told me to lay my head back, tilting it back to the point where I can start to see what is behind me, get my ears in the water, and relax. And then she said – just trust and surrender to the water. I started floating.
You see, before I could float, I had to relax and have the utmost faith and trust that my body would float – if I simply let it and stopped fighting. And once I had that level of trust, I simply had to relax and surrender.
The hemorrhaging woman just knew that if she could just touch Jesus’ cloak, that she would be healed. She had that trust. And Jesus praised her, and saved her, not because she simply touched his clothing, but because of her faith and trust. It is why in yesterday’s Gospel reading, Jesus could not heal anyone in his hometown. Not because He could not do it. He is God. He can do anything. But we must have faith. He could not help them because they lacked faith.
I could not swim until I had faith and trust that my body would naturally float, if I would just relax and believe and surrender to the water. Not only did I learn how to float that day and to tread water and swim, but it was somewhat of a spiritual lesson for me as well.
In today’s first reading, Jacob made a vow, that if God remained with him, that the Lord would be his God. It was a bargain, but Jacob also put his full trust in God.
The hemorrhaging woman just wanted to be healed. She was so desperate after years of suffering; she just totally surrendered and knew that only God could heal her. She believed that Jesus was the Messiah, and that if she touched his cloak, she would be healed. She had complete trust in Jesus.
We need to simply trust in God. In this confusing and chaotic world where truth is hard to see – trust in our Faith! If you want to change your life or are in so much despair that you do not know where to turn or know how you will get out, or if you are so tense that you can barely stay afloat – surrender and trust in God that He will help you through it. It may not be a miraculous healing, or a clear-cut answer, but every time I have gotten out of my own way and surrendered to Jesus, not knowing what I was going to do or what the answer even was, He provided an answer that I did not see coming. And it was the best possible one. Relax and let your guard down. Release the tension in yourself and simply surrender to Him. Believe. Trust in Him that He will not let you sink, and He will provide a means to float.
