Inquisition condemned (Francisco de Goya). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“20And behold, a woman who had suffered from a discharge of blood for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment, 21 for she said to herself, “If I only touch his garment, I will be made well.” 22 Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And instantly the woman was made well.“Matt. 9:20-22(taken from ESV)
I have been a Christian for many years and every time I would here this piece of Scripture, the preacher would always talk about the great faith this woman had. Indeed, her faith was astonishing. Just with the thought of touching Jesus’ garment she thought would heal. I simply stand astonished by this great faith.
However, I do ponder upon what happened before all this took place. A Jewish woman who has been bleeding for twelve years. My educated guess from this premise is that she was not feeling very well neither physically, nor emotionally. Bleeding for quite a while does cause lack of iron in the body which leads to weakening of the body, plus bleeding women in Jewish traditions were considered unclean. If she was married, the husband would not touch her and she would have to make offerings to Yahweh constantly. People would know of her condition and they may think “well, she must have done something very very bad for Yahweh to cause her such calamity”. The shame she must have felt over those twelve years must have been absolutely soul-nagging.
Yet,she ventured with difficulty to touch Jesus; “just a bit of him would be enough”. Just a little bit of Jesus will suffice. On the cross Jesus gave his entire self for me. Is the whole of Jesus enough for me? or does my shame imprison me so much I can’t even reach his cloak?
Our God is not a short-sighted god. He sees into and beyond us. He sees our shame, our imperfection, our brokenness, our dislikes, our pleasure, our sin, our memories, our hurt, our pain, our scars, our dreams and wishes, our deepest desire whether bad or goods and our most shallow ones… He is God almighty and he tells you “come to me just as you are”. In the words of Brennan Manning, God invites you to come to Him saying ” I’ll love you as you are, wounded,frightened,angry, empty,lonely not as you should be… cause you’re never gonna be as you should be” (emphasis added).
Jesus paid for your shame, for falling short when you try and for when you don’t even try. He paid for you all your inequities. I truly pray that these words may sink in. God’s Grace is infinitely bigger than our shame. May she stop our shame so that we can move forward.
Only accepting our brokenness we can accept God’s saving grace. God’s mighty powers cannot be reduced to the concept of human’s mighty powers. For Jesus gave it all. As the song says, Jesus paid it all, He gave it all for our own sake, for our retribution to be restored and cleansed. God did not save anything for us but gave us his most precious gift, his only child so that we may have life with him; not because we deserved it. How marvellous this is! If I truly believed this in my life, if we truly felt this in our minuscule faith great deeds would be done for his glory. Now I don’t like dreaming for the sake of dreaming but let us believe this in our heart. My prayer for you today is that this became engraved in the deepest part of our heart and that from there it would change our whole heart, our whole lives so that we may not be mediocre followers of Christ but true, authentic adopted children of the Father of whom Jesus came and “dwelt among us”(Jn1:14). Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be. I’ll come back to this shame topic soon with more thoughts.
Abba’s Kid
Related articles
- How Could You Love Me? (mychristiancoffeeshop.wordpress.com)
thelittlehouseontherock 