Not too many days ago, my family and my brother’s family accompanied my parents to West Virginia. It was brief but wonderful four days to be together and celebrate my parents 55th Wedding Anniversary. It also proved a blessed time to get to know a little better my brother and his wife’s newly adopted daughter, just in the states from Russia for less than two weeks.
One day in the summer heat my brother and all the children and Pat and I went to a pool in Wheeling that had, as one feature, a water slide that came down from a high hill. Because of the heat all of the grass on the hillside was dry and brown … except in one place. In that one place water would splash out of the tube over the side and water the grass. The rest of the water went on down the tube … rushing the rafts with its laughing cargo (children and adults) down to its intended place.
In the Gospel Lesson for tomorrow, Mark 5:21-34, Jesus received plea from a Synagogue ruler, Jairus, to come and heal his daughter, who turns out is really on her death bed. Jesus agrees, and as he makes his way to his house, a large crowd gathers and follows.
In that crowd, a woman (no name is given) but with a major problem – she has been hemorrhaging for twelve years, follows, and makes a determination, that if she could touch Jesus, she could be healed.
She is not the object of Jesus journey. In fact she almost appears to be an interruption, and inconvenience … if not to Jesus, certainly to Jairus … as he waits on pins and needles for Jesus to come with him. But some things wonderful and amazing happens to and for this woman … if your will, and over-splash of grace.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I feel God’s love, His great grace, are for everybody else but me. So many are so much more important than me. So many are so much more deserving than me. But never, ever, makes me feel like I’m a interruption or inconvenience. I’m not just a parenthesis on His mission of salvation for others. I too am important to Him … deeply loved … special and precious. And I too experience “an Over-Splash of His Grace.”
This woman had, as the King James Version says, “an issue of blood.” We all have issues … don’t we? God knows what they are better than we do ourselves ... and His love for us is still awesome. Well, Jesus will take time to be with us. He will take time to assuage any fear, to fill any need, to shower us with every grace and blessing.
An Over-Splash of Grace. Why not dive on in?
