One Touch in the Crowd

There was a woman who had been sick for twelve years.

Twelve years of bleeding that would not stop. Twelve years of doctors who could not help. She had spent every coin she had, and still the morning came, and still she was tired, and still she was sick.

The worst hurt was this: in those days, a sickness like hers meant that no one was allowed to touch her. No hand on her shoulder. No hug. Twelve years without being held.

She had grown so used to being unseen that she had nearly forgotten how to hope.

And then she heard that Jesus was coming. His boat had just crossed back over the lake, from the far shore where he had set free the man who lived among the tombs. She had heard the reports about him, and she thought, maybe, just maybe, he could help her too.

There was such a crowd. People pressed in on every side, pushing, calling out, everyone wanting something. She was small in the middle of it. Nobody knew her name.

But down in her heart she thought: If I could only touch his clothes. Just the edge. Just the hem.

So she reached.

She slipped between elbows and shoulders, down low where no one looked. She stretched out her fingers. And she touched the very corner of his cloak.

At once she felt it. Like warmth pouring into a cold place. Like a window thrown open in a room that had been shut for years. All the way through, she knew. She was well.

Then Jesus stopped.

In all that crowd, all that pushing, he stopped, and he turned, and he asked, "Who touched me?"

His friends said, "Everyone is touching you! Look at the crowd!" But Jesus kept looking. He searched the faces. He was looking for her.

She was already healed. She could have slipped away. But Jesus did not only want to mend her body and let her go. He wanted her. He wanted to see her face, and for her to know she was not a thief in the crowd but someone he had been looking for all along.

So she came, trembling, and told him everything. Twelve years of it.

And he was not angry. He called her "Daughter." He told her to go in peace. The forgotten one, seen at last.

But even while he spoke, sad news came running toward them. A little girl, a man's only daughter, had just died. Too late, the people whispered. Don't trouble him now.

Jesus went anyway.

He walked into the house where everyone was weeping. He took the small cold hand in his. And softly, the way you might wake a child on a sunny morning, he said, "Little girl, get up."

And she did. She opened her eyes. She got up and walked. And Jesus said, give her something to eat.

There is no crowd big enough to hide you from him, no sickness too old for him to heal, no sleep too deep for him to wake. He stops for the ones everyone else walks past.

And that evening, in a house that had been full of weeping, a little girl sat at the table eating her supper, while her mother and father watched her, laughing through their tears.