Dear Unnamed Woman,
You are only known as ‘woman’,
No name, you were treated inhuman,
All because of a disease that branded you unclean,
You felt filthy all the time, you wanted to be unseen.
An ailment that dogged you for 12 long years,
A condition that barred you from contact with your dears,
It wasn’t your fault yet, you became an outsider,
And the blame on you was bitter like cider.
Then one day you heard of the Lord,
He was in your town that’s what your neighbours told,
Your only hope was walking in front of you,
But there was a huge crowd so you had no clear view,
So you crawled and dodged, just to get through,
A faith you had that He’d make you brand new.
You almost reached where He was but you didn’t know what to do,
You desperately wanted His touch, but you simply had no clue,
So you touched His garment as you were pushed away by a few,
And you were healed that moment, the power your faith drew.
Thank you for teaching me to push through,
Every scoff, every shame, every taunt, every blue,
For telling me to boldly reach out to Him in faith,
To see beyond uncertainty, past all wraith,
To crawl through the desert place,
And dodge every hurtful phase,
To believe there’s power even in His cloth’s lace,
And that all I need is His amazing grace,
Love,
The Desperate Woman
Yet another ‘unnamed woman’ and yet another amazing story of faith. The first time when I heard the story of the woman with the blood issue, I was five or six. The intensity of the disease didn’t quite hit me. But, yes, it was a story that has been used to talk about faith that heals. When I became a teenager, I got the whole picture—I was able to empathise with the pain that she went through. Not that I went through the same but I am pretty sure every woman reading this knows the pain and difficulty that we face during our monthly cycle. It is painful, it is messy and above all, it is uncomfortable. Five days of it and we’re exhausted—imagine 12 years of it! And to top it all, she lived in a time when bleeding was considered unclean—this meant that she would not have been allowed to enter the temple for Jewish religious ceremonies. The Law said, “anything or anyone she touched became unclean as well.” So, we can establish the fact from this that ‘there was no human touch during the 12 years of her disease.’ Apart from the blood issue, the woman must have had other hormonal imbalances associated with it, like acne, mood swings and the long list of other synonymous problems.
They say, “desperate times call for desperate measures.” This woman was desperate for a miracle and she knew that Jesus is the only one who’d give it to her. I initially thought, maneuvering through the crowd must have been easy for her especially because nobody wanted to have any sort of contact with her. But, the Bible talks about a huge crowd. So, either the crowd was too busy getting ahead to Jesus or she must have hidden her face with a veil. Either way, she was determined to get to Jesus but little did she expect Him to feel her touch. “She touched His garment!” and “she was healed”—these are my favourite bits of the story. Now, when it comes to Jesus ‘feeling the healing’—we can’t steal a miracle from Him; every healing happens with His knowledge. And the most touching part is that Jesus was moved by her act of faith. Jesus did not consider her unclean neither did He refuse to talk about her to the crowd.
There are so many things that the church does not like addressing—mostly because they’re tagged as taboo. I am pretty sure that every time the woman spoke about her blood issue, people would shoo her away. Only the person going through a problem fully understands the trauma associated with it. But having said that, who are we to pose as someone who is self-righteous and shoo them away when they reach out for help. Anything can happen to anyone at any time—this is something that we need to thrust in our head. Jesus, the purest of all, did not throw away His cloak just because an ‘unclean’ woman touched it—He could have, but He didn’t. Are we greater than Him who stopped to turn around and tell the crowd about the amazing faith of someone who was considered an outcast? God is moved by our small acts of faith—hence, I mostly suggest people to reach out to Him that is greater than he that is in the world. But again, we are His children, called by His name—we have responsibilities as the heir of the God Most High. And one of our biggest responsibility is loving our brethren—Unconditionally!
P.S: Start reflecting God’s love. Sometimes all that people need is a touch or a comforting word. Don’t shoo them away.