Running With Mark 36
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:
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.