Scripture
Then the woman, trembling with fear…came and fell at His {Jesus} feet and told Him the whole truth.
~Mark 5:33, REB
Quote
~Ya’akov
We have three miracles in Mark 5 and all three involve hopeless cases. No one could help the crazed lunatic that was possessed by thousands of demons. He was a mad man, a danger to himself and others. No one is their right mind would get near him. Then there is the woman with the issue of blood who had spent every dime she had on doctors and instead of getting better, she got continually worse. Then there is Jarius: first his daughter is sick but by the time Jesus gets to the house she is dead. The good news is, there are no hopeless causes with Jesus.
Danny Thomas named his hospital St. Jude’s because Saint Jude is the patron saint for hopeless causes. When St. Jude opened 75 years ago, leukemia was taking the lives of children and there was little hope when a child was diagnosed the this dreadful lymphatic cancer. Now St Jude’s has a 94% success rate in treating this childhood disease. Someone named Mark 5 the St. Jude chapter because it is filled with hopeless causes but again: Jesus is the champion of hopeless causes.
The nameless woman with the constant bleeding was from Caesarea Philippi which was 37 miles North of Capernaum. She went to a great deal of effort to find Jesus. The bleeding made her unclean; plus some think she was a gentile. These two things made it illegal for her to be among Jews. She slipped up behind Jesus, worked her way through the crowd then crawled the last few feet and reached out and touched the tassel or hem of his robe. Only a desperate person would take such a chance. She was healed immediately and knew it. Her next move was to get out of the crowd and out of sight but Jesus wouldn’t allow it. He forced her to confess her faith publicly. He knew who touched Him and she knew that He knew so she confessed. She basically shared her testimony in front of the entire crowd. No wonder she was trembling with fear. Jesus does not want us to be ashamed of Him. He wants us to confess Him publicly and He wants us to share our testimony concerning the things He has done in our behalf. Twice in Mark 5, He gives new converts a crash course in discipleship by teaching to share their testimony. Jesus trained the cured demoniac to be a missionary in less than a day.
THANK YOU JESUS
Yesterday was a marathon day for many of us. The Sunday before Easter has become a busy day in recent years. I was thrilled with our turnout: we had more for the egg hunt and fish fry than we had for worship yesterday morning. We probably had 55-60 yesterday morning and over 100 last night. We fried two boxes of fish, 6 boxes of shrimp, I don’t know how many hush puppies and fries and there was one piece of fish left and a hand full of fries. The most thrilling thing for me was to see our folks eat together: this is the first fellowship we have had since covid. It was great to see.
Well, we knew it would happen; it never fails. We had a month of Spring weather and this week winter is paying us a visit. I have not planted a thing but I still dread the 30 degree weather. I am kind of fond of the 60-70 degree weather.
I hope you have a great day and a great week. Thanks for reading the blog.