From Mark 5:24-34, “So Jesus went with them. A large crowd surrounded and pressed around him.” Feel the claustrophobic crowd pushing in. Hear the cacophony of voices calling out. Smell the bodies pressing together and sense the excited uncertainty about what Jesus will do next. “A woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse.”

Twelve years of hoping and of hopes dashed. Twelve years of misery, of pain, of weakness. She is without resources; financially, physically, emotionally, mentally. She is destitute and discouraged beyond words and worst of all she is alone. Belonging nowhere and with no one. I know what it feels like to feel alone even in a crowd, so do you. I wonder what this Woman’s name was, despair, hopeless, outcast. Twelve years of an ailment that made her unclean and outside of society and even left without a place to meet with God. She can’t go to the synagogue to seek out Jesus where he often taught. She can’t even go there to pray. From Leviticus 15:19….“when a woman has her regular flow of blood, the impurity of her monthly period will last seven days, and anyone who touches her will be unclean till evening.” But she has not been unclean for seven days but twelve grueling years. Unlike Jairus, who has a position of standing, she is nothing and she has lived this reality every day, year after year.

Maybe you’ve tasted this kind of despair. Perhaps you know pain and doubt is an ever-present companion. You wonder where you belong. If you belong. We all carry our own feelings of unclean, outcast, alone. When God seems distant and faith bleeding, but we are not alone. And somewhere deep inside this broken woman she finds a mustard seed of faith and takes a risk, an audacious risk. She works her way through the crowd until she is close enough to touch Jesus.