Taking a Risk to Find Lasting Peace
Hi Friends,
Do you long for peace? Join me today for the true story of a woman who so longed for healing and peace that she took a great risk to find it.
(Excerpted from From Recovery to Restoration: 60 Meditations for Finding Peace & Hope in Crisis [affiliate link]).
Go Into Peace
Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace. Luke 8:48
Maybe it’s been twelve long years, and healing hasn’t yet come. Or maybe your child has been pronounced “cancer-free,” but your heart has yet to feel anxiety-free. When you live daily in the ongoing effects of disaster as the bleeding woman in Luke 8 did, it may seem too risky to believe that Jesus can and will save you and bring you into his peace.
The day of the diagnosis has long since passed. The bleeding woman has now suffered with her illness for twelve tense years. She has spent all her money on doctors, but none could heal her . She has lost all community because she is considered unclean (Luke 8:43). She is out of options. She is, frankly, desperate. Maybe that’s why she reaches out to touch the healing Rabbi’s garment. Maybe desperation is what drives us all to commit our wildest acts of faith.
Jesus, jostled and pressed by the throngs of people who have come to see him, asks an odd, even preposterous question, “Who touched me?” but no one fesses up (Luke 8:45). Peter, ever ready to speak his mind, points out the absurdity of the question, but Jesus insists, “Someone has touched me, for I perceive that power has gone out from me” (Luke 8:45-46).
The once-bleeding woman, now healed, realizes she must confess. Trembling, she falls before Jesus, and right there in front of all those people, tells him her story, describes her years of illness, her years of loneliness. “I was desperate,” she might have said. “And I was healed instantly” (Luke 8:47). As she finishes her confession and looks up, does she fear finding condemnation in the mighty Rabbi’s eyes? After all, she, a woman, an unclean woman, had touched him, a man and a Rabbi.
But Jesus has no words of condemnation for her, only words of healing and forgiveness, words of peace, words of hope. “Daughter,” he begins. He names her tenderly as his own. “Your faith has made you well.” Yes, he labels her wild act of desperation, her betting belief that Jesus could make her clean, “faith.” “Go in peace” he commands her. My pastor, Rev. Joel Treick, pointed out that the word translated “in” means literally “into”— “Go into peace.” Because Jesus has healed all of our sins, we can now live into his peace. Therein lies our deepest hope.
Dear friends, hear Jesus’ call to trust him, to seek him in your sickness and exhaustion and stress. He has saved all who believe in him, all who take hold of him, and he has given us his peace. We may or may not know the instantaneous healing and full recovery in the next few days or the next few years, but we will one day know them finally and forever. Until that day comes, let us in desperation reach for the hem of his garment and lean into the peace he gives.
Prayer
Dear Jesus,
We are desperate to be healed; we aren’t even strong enough to reach for you. Give us the faith we need. Help us to live into your peace, even when ongoing struggles threaten to unsettle us. In your healing name, Amen.
Further Encouragement
Read Luke 8:42-48.
Listen to “In Christ Alone” by Stuart Townend and Keith Getty at https://youtu.be/oZuIyrwSqHY.
For Reflection
Imagine Jesus speaking directly to you, “Daughter (Son), your faith has made you well. Go into peace.” Write out or pray aloud your response to those words.
