Taking a Risk
January 17, 2021 by Cynthia Ruchti
Filed under Daily Devotions, Worship
By Cynthia Ruchti –
I know to grab the box of tissues before I watch certain movies. I cried during a recent dinner-and-a-movie date with my husband and wiped my tears with my popcorn napkin. My peripheral vision caught Bill lifting his glasses to wipe his own eyes.
Some passages of the Bible should come with a “grab the tissues” warning. When King David’s child died. When the paralytic took his first steps because his desperate-to-help friends clawed a hole in the roof and lowered him to Jesus. When Jesus called out to His Father in a loud voice, “Into your hands I commit my spirit!”
Among the others that bring me to tears because of the sweep of sadness, the remorse, the poignancy, or the love displayed is the scene when Jesus healed the woman with the twelve-year bleeding problem.
How alone and ostracized she must have felt in a society that treated problems such as hers like leprosy! Shunned from social functions; banned from the temple; exhausted by her disease and by the unimaginable and unsuccessful treatments thrust on her by physicians, quacks, and the well-meaning but uninformed; anemic; pathetic; friendless; and drained by the financial burden that stole the rest of her energies…
The woman defined the concept of utter desperation.
Crushed by it all, she must have been crawling along the ground to have reached out and touched not the shoulder or the waistband but the hem of Jesus’ garment. She was instantly healed.
This is the part that pierces me with its beauty. Jesus turned and called her “Daughter.”
I picture Jesus reaching down to lift her from where she’d fallen, cupping her face in His hands, and commending her for taking the risk of trusting Him to heal her.
Where are my tissues?
AUTHOR QUOTE: Is Jesus asking you to take a risk in trusting Him for something only He can do for you? Stretch out your hand.
“Jesus said, ‘Daughter, you took a risk trusting me, and now you’re healed and whole. Live well, live blessed’” (Luke 8:48 MSG).
I loved when you wrote he called her “Daughter.” I pictured Jesus saying that to me. It brought tears to my eyes. The creator of the universe calls me “Daughter.” Oh how great Jesus is!
Thank you, Elaine. To me, it’s one of the most tender moments in the whole Bible…and its speaks deeply to my heart.