The woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve long years reached out to Jesus in faith. Desperate to be healed, she stretched out her hand and touched the edge of His cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped. (Luke 8:44) Jesus did not see her, but He knew power had gone out from Him. (Luke 8:46)
The disciples, because of the great crowd (who didn’t have to keep two metres apart as we do currently!), would happily have gone on without caring about the woman. Harried and hassled and on a mission to help a sick girl, they weren’t interested in finding out who had touched Jesus. But the woman, ‘seeing that she could not go unnoticed’ came and admitted what she had done. (Luke 8:47)
I believe that each one of us does not go unnoticed before God. We may feel insignificant as we stretch our hands to touch Jesus. We may feel that in such desperate times the numbers of those crying out to God mean He can’t hear our voice or feel our touch, but this story reminds us that no individual goes unnoticed.
Jesus took the time to speak to the woman and offer encouragement and hope, even though this diverted Him from His journey to Jairus’s daughter. In the delay, that girl died. Things got worse. Yet Jesus was not thwarted by delay or diversion. Instead, He raised Jairus’s daughter from the dead. (Luke 8:49-56) He still sorted the problem.
May we be encouraged today that we are not unnoticed by God and that even delay and disruption cannot stop God’s purposes from being fulfilled in our lives and in our world.
