I've kind of always felt like an outcast. I didn't have too many friends through school.
It's weird being homeless, abused and neglected from where I grew up. It was not normal and most of my life, I've spent hiding my past.
But what I've been thinking about is... what would Jesus do if He met me?
Would He hug me? Would He heal me of my mental illnesses? What would we talk about?
You see, Jesus loved the outcasts. He understood them on a deep level and I think He does that for us as well, maybe not in a physical or tangible way but in a spiritual way.
The story that has been on my mind and in my heart the past few days as I battle paranoia due to feeling like others are spreading rumors about me is the story of the bleeding woman. In the story, Jesus is traveling in a crowd and a woman who has been bleeding for 12 years comes up to him and touches his cloak. Jesus feels it and He asks who touched Him. The woman says she did and He heals her because of her faith.
Your faith has healed you...
This story is one that reaches down into my heart because her illness made her unclean by society's standards yet she dared to touch Jesus because she knew she would be healed. She was so desparate to be healed.
I understand her frustration. I understand what it's like to be an outcast in society. I know what it's like to be so desparate for things to get better.
Her faith made her brave and courageous. Jesus reached out to her, even though it wasn't the custom at the time. To everyone else, she was an unclean outcast. Jesus looked past her illness and healed her. I have faith that if He walked the earth now, He might do the same for me. He wouldn't treat me like an outcast. I think He'd embrace me.
That gives me a lot of hope...
I want to leave with a song that is based off of the bible passage about the bleeding woman. It's called One Touch by Nicole C. Mullen.
The lyrics say:
Jesus sure enough touched me
and I know I've been made whole.
Amen.
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