The Power of a Touch

Our gospel reading this week is a story of two women who are healed. Both are anonymous, one named by a condition and the other by a relationship. There is a bleeding woman who is cut off from her community because of her condition and has been impoverished by physicians whose skills have failed her. She would have been invisible to those who did not know her and those who did would have shrunk back for fear of contact contamination. In her desperation she doesn’t care. “If I but touch the hem of his robe…” Her faith in this moment has everything to do with the one in whom she places it. After being made well, free to walk away, steps forward and admits to touching a man in public while she is bleeding and that Jesus did what no one else had been able to.

Then we will hear about the 12 year old daughter of Jairus. Her father shows the same sort of courage born of desperation that the woman did. No doubt members of the synagogue have heard of this Galilean preacher and wonder if their leader has lost his mind, but Jairus believes that Jesus is his daughter's hope.

What gives you hope? What gives you reason to get up in the morning?