Go in Peace

Beside the Sea of Galilee, a crowd is pressing so tightly around Jesus that people can hardly move. A woman who has been bleeding for twelve years reaches out from behind Him and touches His clothes.

We know why she did it that way, because most of us would have done the same. We would take the cure and skip the conversation. We would rather nobody found out how long the trouble had gone on, or what we had already tried, or how much we had spent. Mark tells us all of it about her: she "had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse." It reads like a file about ourselves that we would rather keep closed. We would gladly take the healing, but being known is the part that costs.

Then Jesus stops and asks, "Who touched my clothes?" That seems almost unkind, and the disciples say as much: "Thou seest the multitude thronging thee." Still He keeps looking around. So she comes "fearing and trembling," and Mark says she "told him all the truth." She told all of it, out loud, in front of the crowd she had been hiding in. Only then does Jesus speak to her. She already has the cure, so what He gives her now is a word and a name: "Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague." She is the only person the Gospels record Jesus calling "Daughter."

That truth is uncomfortable, and it is kind. Many of us would rather be fixed than met. A secret cure leaves you healed and still unknown. Jesus stopped on that road because He will not be a God you can touch without being spoken to. He wants to know you, and He wants you to go home whole and at peace, knowing whose child you are.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 142 is Heard at Midnight (Acts 16:25).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna