Hope Now: 27 Days to Peace, Healing, and Justiceনমুনা

Hope and peace as healing

Imagine a life in which there is no healing. You break your arm or suffer a deep wound, but no help is on the way. Recovery doesn’t exist. There is no help, no hope. You live with the damage, with the loss and with the hurt. Your body tries to heal itself to no avail.

You have a scar, a deformed arm, or even worse, an abscess or infection invades your body. No healing, no hope, no peace.

Imagine a life in which there’s no healing for emotional scars, abuse, depression, discouragement or relational conflict either. Imagine the loss from economic hardship, mistakes or failures in the marketplace. You just learn to adjust and live with loss, with less, with pain.

Now, imagine just for a moment that healing is possible in this life. How would you feel about that possibility? What would you do if you heard all you had to do was get close enough to a person who could heal you? You don’t need an appointment. You don’t need to know somebody who can introduce you. You don’t even need to have a conversation.

All you must do is get close enough to touch that person to be healed. What if you learned his name was Jesus?

One woman did exactly that. She suffered from a bleeding disorder for 12 years. 12 years of loss, pain, embarrassment and shame. She heard that healing could happen instantly just by touching Jesus’ garment. She had enough information and a determination to get close enough to Jesus to touch him.

With crowds almost crushing Jesus as he walked through town, she came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak and immediately her bleeding stopped. Jesus felt it and said, “Who touched me?” (Luke 8:45 NIV)

His disciples were aghast. The question seemed a bit ridiculous to the disciples, impossible to answer.

But Jesus insisted. Jesus could sense the power that went from him to heal the woman. The woman knew she couldn’t go unnoticed, so she came forward and fell at the feet of Jesus and began to tremble. She told everyone about her situation and how she’d been healed on the spot.

Jesus said, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace” (Luke 8:47 NIV).

This is hard to imagine, but it really did happen. In fact, sick people found healing simply by touching Jesus’ cloak so often word began to spread. People began begging for the opportunity to get close enough to Jesus to touch his cloak for instant healing.