”And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse.  When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.
At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”

“You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ”
But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.” (Mark 5: 25 – 34).

In this passage from the Gospel of Mark, we meet a woman who clearly believed that it would be enough to touch Jesus’ clothes for her to be healed, even though many years had passed and no doctor had been able to help her. The text doesn’t tell us why she believed – had she seen others be healed, had she heard Jesus say that he is the Son of God, or had someone else told her about Jesus?
This miracle is a little different compared to most other miracles Jesus performed, as he didn’t take action himself – it was the woman who, in faith, took action. Jesus noticed that power had gone out from him.

We read that there were people everywhere crowding against Jesus, and most likely there were others touching his clothes. But this woman touched him with a purpose.
This particular woman must have believed that Jesus was the one he said he was, and although she was afraid when Jesus asked around wondering who had touched him, her faith in who this man was, released her healing. This woman knew who Jesus was.

Jesus tells her: “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”
Sometimes I think we make our faith more complicated than it actually is. It’s like we sometimes put more faith in our own faith than in God. Let us put our trust and faith in who God is, in his omnipotence and total authority. A good friend of mine once said: ”Dare to believe that the gospel is as amazing as it actually is.”

Dare to believe, like the woman in the gospel of Mark, that Jesus really is the one he says he is: the Son of God, our living hope!