Day 8

34 And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Your suffering is over.” (Mark 5.24 NLT)

Do you remember trying to sneak up on people to scare them as a kid? Scaring people isn’t kind, but as a kid…it sure can be fun. Or if you’re a parent, remember when you tried to sneak into your child’s room because you forgot something when you put them to sleep, and you know it’ll take your best ninja impression not to wake them up. In this moment, you enter your Batman era and do your best to make Christian Bale proud of your impression of him during his training with the League of Shadows. Okay, maybe that’s a bit much, but you’re doing your best to go unnoticed. That’s where we find this woman. Sneaking around a crowd, trying not to be noticed so she could receive healing from Jesus because everything else she’s tried hasn’t worked.

She’s not trying to get attention, not be noticed, and doesn’t need recognition but believes Jesus can make her well. The interesting thing about belief is that it is simply about taking something to be true. It’s why she believed that Jesus could heal me; she believed it to be true. But Jesus didn’t say that taking something to be true is what healed her. It was her faith. Oxford professor of philosophy Mark Wrathhall defines faith this way, “Faith involves a reliance and trust, even enduring in the face of doubts.”

As a disciple of Jesus, believing is more than just taking something to be true. It’s operating in the reality that it’s true, reliable, and trustworthy even in the face of our doubts.

Reflection:

How do you define belief? How do you define faith? Are they interchangeable for you?