"And while [Jesus] was going ... a woman who had suffered from blood flow for twelve years, and who had spent all she had on doctors, and none could be healed, came up behind her ..." Luke 8:42 -44
For some Jews in the time of Jesus, and for some modern believers, there is only one answer for the disease: sin. It seems very simple to think that if one is physically well, is well spiritually and one person is seriously ill, He is that something very bad has made. Jesus was sometimes questioned regarding this matter. On one occasion, when seeing a blind man, the disciples asked: "Who sinned, this one or his parents, so that he was born blind?" (John 9: 2) And Jesus posed a new perspective to see the disease that perhaps none of them had occurred to them.
Let's try to put ourselves in the place of the woman mentioned in Luke 8. I was twelve years suffering a shameful disease. The blood flow was a disease that had serious consequences for the ladies. They were frowned upon, rejected and considered unclean by their disease. Can you imagine dealing with such a disease for twelve years? Twelve years of rejection, twelve years of marginalization and signaling, twelve years of suffering, twelve years of suffering. However, as if this were not enough, the doctor Lucas added a detail that also mentioned the evangelist Mark: "She had suffered a lot at the hands of several doctors, and had spent everything she had without it would have served, because in from time to time, it went from bad to worse "(Marc. 5:26). That is, the woman had turned to doctors for twelve years and none could help her. He had also spent all his resources, which surely were not many, in the doctors; and it did not help her either. Rather, it "went from bad to worse". Putting ourselves in this woman's place we would surely find ourselves: resigned, hurt, frustrated, disappointed, ruined, and hopeless.
Humanly speaking, such a situation is the worst and the last thing that we can live. But once I read, the moment when we feel without strength, without hope, without resources and without any other solution in our hands; that is the best time for the Lord to act with all power and to show his glory in our weakness. This woman "heard about Jesus"; surely it is those twelve years he had prayed and cried out to Jehovah to heal him. What could change now? Why did not God heal her before? Why believe that this time I could be healed? Why do what everyone was doing at that moment? This woman had the patience and had the faith to believe that this would be the time of God.
Marcos reveals a little of what the woman thought. She said: "If I touch her mantle alone, I will be saved" (Mark 5:28). It is there that she "approached him from behind" and as the story says "she was instantly cured". When God's time comes, and when we place all our trust in him, he does not reject anyone, even if he approaches him "from behind". Many times the Lord humbles us for "twelve years", so that when his time comes his name will be glorified. We can not understand God's way of thinking, but the immense power of God. It does not matter how much time we have suffering, nor how disappointed we are to try everything. Approaching God is what must be done. Although it seems trite or that it is not for me, or even if I say: "but I have already prayed a lot". God wants to act, and he will only do it when you acknowledge that you have spent all your resources, strengths and hopes; and that you only surrender to him.
