Day Thirty-Five – February 2, 2020  

Read: Mark 5:21-43 New Revised Standard Version

Today’s devotion comes from a book called Seasons of Your Heart: Prayers and Reflections, Revised and Expanded by Macrina Wiederkehr. 

That woman is you!  I don’t know what your hemorrhage looks like, but I have little doubt that something in you is bleeding.  I don’t know what your faith looks like, but I have little doubt that something in you is believing.  And so really, that’s enough.  All you need do is to approach Jesus, bleeding and believing.  The hem will be enough for touching.  Power like that, moving through you will help you understand your wound.  Once you understand a wound, it loses its power to destroy you. I know.  That woman is me! I’ve been to the hem of God’s garment.  Let me tell you a story.

 

Once there was a wound

It was no ordinary wound.  It was my wound

We had lived together long.

 

I yearned to be free of this wound

I wanted the bleeding to stop

Yet if the truth be known

I felt a strange kind of gratitude

    for this wound

It made me

    tremendously open to grace

    vulnerable to God’s mercy.

 

A beautiful believing in me

    that I have named Faith

    kept growing, daring me

    to reach for what I could not see.

 

This wound had made me open.

I was ready for grace

 

And so one day, I reached.

 

There I was thick in the crowd

    bleeding and believing

    and I reached.

 

At first I reached

    for what I could see

    the fringe of a garment,

 

But my reaching didn’t stop there

    for Someone reached back into

    me.

 

A grace I couldn’t see

    flowed through me.

 

A power I didn’t understand

    began to fill the depths of me.

 

Trembling I was called forth

    to claim my wholeness.

 

The bleeding had left me.

 

The believing remained

 

And strange as this may sound

 

I have never lost my gratitude

    for the wound

    that made me so open

    to grace.[1]

Music:

There is a Balm in Gilead

Impossible Things by Chris Tomlin

 

Prayer Focus:

What would you say to your 12-year old self?  What advice would you give?

Talk to God about reaching out to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment.  What are you reaching for?  What is your wound?

 

Grace and peace,

Pastor Karen Bruins

[1] Wiederkehr, Macrina. Seasons of Your Heart: Prayers and Reflections, Revised and Expanded. New York: HarperOne, 2012.