The Healing of Veronica

Meditations of the Gospel of Mark

August 19, 2020

The Healing of Veronica

And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Your suffering is over.”

Mark 5:34

Read: Mark 5: 21-34

In our readings for today and tomorrow, Mark weaves two stories of fear, faith and healing together into a beautiful tapestry revealing both the love of God for individuals and the larger mission of Jesus the Messiah. At the end of chapter four, Jesus challenged his disciples to reach for greater faith. Here in chapter five, Mark reveals the core of the faith Jesus is longing for his followers to embrace. I find it interesting that this faith is modeled by two people who were not disciples.

The early church wanted the woman with the bleeding problem to be remembered always. They gave her the name of Veronica, and in the devotional exercise, The Stations of the Cross, she is the woman who wipes Jesus’ face at station six.

Veronica’s faith calls her to take huge risks. She was a woman reaching out to touch a man, The Teacher, in a public place, and because of her condition, she was deemed an unclean person.  But she reaches out and touches Jesus because he is her only hope.

Jesus tells Veronica that it was her faith that made her well. Her faith did not make the healing happen; her faith allowed her healing to come to her. Her faith had no power other than providing a channel for Jesus’ healing power to flow into her.

My Takeaway: I’ve read that Mother Teresa lived by the axiom: you will never know Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have. We have seen this axiom modeled several times in the Gospel of Mark, along with the axiom, desperate times call for desperate measures. (Remember the friends who tore up the roof on Jesus’ home? (July 31)). I sense an invitation: how desperate are you for Jesus to move in your life?

Sē’lah

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(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  The meditations are published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/ and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com. The BLOG is also available on Amazon Kindle, by subscription.

Copyright © 2020 by Alex M. Knight

Publications by Alex M. Knight:

• Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms has been published and is now available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

• The second edition of  First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.