For He Is Able to Heal

BY Beth Joseph

In Mark 5, we encounter two people filled with fear. One is a father who is desperate enough to humble himself as a religious leader and ask a man rumored to be a faith healer to come and touch his daughter. The other is a woman who has been shunned by her family and community for at least twelve years and is willing to risk further isolation to reach this same man to see if He can restore her broken body. 

Both of these encounters with Jesus require faith that God could heal. 

The woman with chronic illness not only was risking her own social status, but she was compromising Jesus’s, too. After making her way through a crowd that she normally would have never been in, she gets to Jesus and reaches out in faith. The woman’s fear almost wins until Jesus directly addresses her: “Daughter…your faith has saved you” (Mark 5:34). Due to her sickness, she likely had been separated from any contact with people, including her own family, and this may have been the first time she heard herself called “daughter” in a very long time. 

Imagine what it would have felt like to be the father who first asked for Jesus’s healing abilities, watching Jesus stop and give someone else his miracle (v.30). Here we see Jesus again directly address someone’s fear: “Don’t be afraid. Only believe” (v.36). Jairus didn’t only have to believe in healing; he also had to believe in resurrection. 

The primary passage in today’s reading is one full of joy and fear eliminated. Scripture also speaks to the inverse—how sometimes we will endure afflictions in this life (2Corinthians 4:17–18). While He is able to heal, He is not obligated. 

As I write this, I think of friends who are still waiting for their healing. l ache knowing that there is healing I have prayed for and believed God for, that has not come yet. Some of you reading this may still be waiting, too. 

This is why we also read our passage in Revelation today. While He is able to heal here, He also will heal when we reach the other side of eternity. This is a promise that we can cling to in the face of fear. I am praying for you today in whatever situation or circumstance you may be in. I am praying you remember that He is both able to heal, and He one day will heal and make “everything new” (Revelation 21:5).