February 5, 2016: Day 33 – Mark 5

So these pictures represent our best guess as to where Jesus drove out the evil spirits of legion and where they then entered the pigs and and drowned into the sea.  For some reason I pictured it happening today with 2000 swine running down a hill full of mines and the carnage that would have ensued.  The recognition of who Jesus is by a demoniac living in the tombs is a humbling Bible story considering that he may be one of the very few who truly understand the power and the presence of our Savior.  So often it is the least expected person who actually understands and is a follower of Jesus rather than those that we traditionally think are obeying his commandments.

The man who had the evil spirits then asks Jesus to be able to be one of his disciples and to be with Jesus as he ministered.  But Jesus had different plans for him, and he becomes one of the first evangelists who was sent out to the Decapolis, or the ten cities within the Palestinian region.   It is significant that already the word of Jesus was getting out and that it wasn’t just after his death that people began to understand who he was, but even before.

We also have the woman who was suffering from a hemorrhage for 12 years and could not get any resolution to her problem.  That is a long time to have a medical issue that no one can solve.  “If I just touch his clothes, I will be made well.”  There is no wavering there, there is no doubt expressed by her and the sentence contains no conditional tense in it at all.  Jesus’ release of power through his clothes is a bit unusual, not something that we see anywhere else, and we must assume that it was purposeful and for a reason, not just a random act of kindness over which he has not control.  Look at vs. 33 and you see that she tells Jesus “the whole truth.”  We often miss that part of this story.  It is there where we find the reason for the miracle.  She needed to tell Jesus the whole truth because it is only after that happens that Jesus is able to say: “go in peace and be healed of your disease.”  Often it is our inability to be able to face the truths in our life that keeps us down and often unable to get past whatever may be ailing us.  The telling of the truth, to ourselves and our family, is crucial in order to have a healthy relationship with our Savior.

The raising of the dead child is also a very unique miracle that takes place in the ministry of Jesus.  I love the fact that upon healing her he orders her family to give her something to eat.  Is this a case where Jesus intervenes in a situation where the parents were maybe not taking care of her as she should have been taken care of?  We are reading way too much into it, after all her father comes to ask for Jesus to come and heal her.  Jairus was a leader in the synagogue.  Jesus takes Jairus and his wife and Peter, James and John into the room to raise the girl from her sleep.  He takes those who needed to be there to see this little girl be raised from the dead.  I can only imagine the mom and dad seeing their little girl rise up after they had marked her off for dead.  How do you not tell anyone what Jesus just did for you (vs. 43)?