The crowd is thick and urgent. Sandals scrape against sunbaked stone. Sweat gathers at temples, dripping down faces flushed with hope or desperation, maybe both. Jairus, the synagogue leader, is pushing through with a frantic kind of reverence, pleading with Jesus. His daughter is dying. You can hear it in his voice, the way it cracks at the edges. And somewhere in the press of bodies, there is a woman who should not be here. A woman who has been bleeding for twelve long years. Unclean. Unwelcome. Unseen. But she is here anyway, fingertips stretching out through the crowd, reaching not for his attention but for the hem of his robe.

The Story

Jesus had just returned across the sea, and the people were waiting. Jairus wasted no time. He fell at Jesus’s feet, the kind of fall that comes from a heart too heavy to stand tall. “Come,” he begged, “my little girl is dying.” They start toward his home, but the crowd is crushing in from all sides. Somewhere in the noise and chaos, the woman comes close. She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t interrupt. She simply reaches, believing in her bones that if she touches just a thread of his cloak, she will be healed.

And she is. Immediately.

The bleeding stops. But before she can slip away into anonymity, Jesus stops too. “Who touched me?” It seems absurd to the disciples. Everyone is touching him. But Jesus knows. He felt power go out from him. The woman steps forward, trembling. She tells her story, the whole truth. Jesus listens. He calls her daughter. A word as healing as the miracle itself.

Even as those words hang in the air, news comes from Jairus’s house. It’s too late. His daughter has died. But Jesus doesn’t flinch. “Don’t be afraid. Just believe.” At the house, the mourners laugh when he says she is only sleeping. But Jesus takes her hand. “Little girl, I say to you, get up.” And she does. She rises, and they give her something to eat. Because even miracles leave you hungry.

Reflection and Connection

I have felt like both of them. Like Jairus, pleading for Jesus to hurry, to notice, to show up before it is too late. And I have felt like the woman, quiet and worn thin, clinging to the hope that maybe, just maybe, I matter enough for healing. What strikes me is how Jesus moves through both moments. He is not overwhelmed by urgency. He is not distracted by the crowd. He is present to the one bleeding and the one grieving.

He sees. He listens. He calls us daughter. He reaches for our hands. And when we think it’s too late, he whispers, don’t be afraid. Just believe.

The Bigger Picture

There are days when I am desperate for something to shift. For healing that has taken years. For answers that don’t seem to come. For someone I love to be okay. This story reminds me that Jesus is not in a rush, but he is not indifferent. He doesn’t miss the ones who come quietly, or the ones who cry out in the open. He moves through the noise and the need with a calm that can only come from love. He still stops. He still sees. He still heals.

And maybe that’s the hope we hold today. That even if all we can do is reach out for the hem of grace, it will be enough. Because he still says, Get up, little girl. And when he does, we rise.

Gracefully yours,

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