Mark 5

As the 5th grade students come in to English class each day, I ask them to do a brief "daily journal" assignment. This is simply answering one question a day. It can be a one sentence answer, or they can write as much as they want or have time to write.

Yesterday's question was "What is one of your favorite stories from the Bible?"

Many students put down Jesus' birth, Jesus' death, "Jesus is alive again", or Noah. :)

But one student wrote, "I think the best is Mark 5."

I blinked at the simple sentence, amazed that a student had written a reference rather than a title, looked up Mark chapter five and responded in this student's journal, "Wow, good choice. I agree."

The fifth chapter in Mark's Gospel holds three amazing accounts, one of which, over the course of the past couple of years, has become one of my favorites in the Bible. In this chapter, Christ heals a man possessed by demons, raises and dead girl to life, and in the midst of it all, while walking, heals a woman who had been sick and suffering for a long time.

I admire this woman's faith. In verses 25-29, we read:

25And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. 26She 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. 27When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28because she thought, "If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed." 29Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.

At this point, Jesus stops walking along, asks who touched him, his disciples think he's crazy because so many people are touching him. The woman comes forward, falls at Jesus's feet, shaking with fear and tells Him the whole truth. In verse 34, Jesus says:

34He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering."

Those words are amazing to me. Oh, to hear Jesus speak those words to me! And that's exactly what he does through His Word! The kindness, power, and mercy of Christ are something for us all to remember daily.

Now, I doubt that this was the specific part of Mark 5 that my student was referring to. My guess is that he thought the healing of the demon possessed man was the cool part. But I was glad that he mentioned that chapter today to help me remember all that Christ has done, is doing, and will do for me and for you.

Because Christ is here...

Every Friday during summer school (except for the Friday that they didn't have classes because of the typhoon), the students took a trip. One Friday, we went hiking at a place not far away. It was a beautiful kind of part with walking trails and a church. A pastor there came a few years back to work with the community and make it a place of retreat and renewal. It had been a community kind of shut off from the rest of the island. No young adults stuck around. It was only elderly people and young children. In a video we watched there, some of the people in the area shared that they had felt abandoned and hopeless. Then this pastor came with the good news about Jesus Christ. The pastor got the community members involved in making murals along the pathways. The pastor provided the church as a place to meet together. The pastor hopes that the land can be a kind of "promised land" for people who are looking for hope. And we know that only Jesus Christ can give true hope to a person.

One quote that really struck with me from our visit there, was one person who shared in the video, "Because Christ is here, everything has changed."

That is a great testimony to what Jesus Christ can do in a community and in a person.

I love that verse from 2 Corinthians 5:17: Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

May we look at our life and our heart and say the same,"Because Christ is here, everything has changed."