To Be Made WellSample

How can shame keep us from healing?

Many distractions are crowding out God’s presence in our lives. But even if we can cut through these distractions, we often wonder whether God’s healing is really for us. Do I deserve God’s healing touch? Is my pain significant enough for God to want to heal me?

In Mark’s story of the bleeding woman, even after she reaches out for Jesus and feels that her bleeding has stopped, she almost misses out on healing.

Mark writes, “When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, ‘If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.’ Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. . . . But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth” (5:27–29, 32–33).

Crowds are the first barrier to healing. This woman’s shame about her situation is the second. She has been bleeding for over a decade. She has become destitute and an outcast. Her shame keeps her from approaching Jesus face-to-face and receiving the full healing he wants to offer.

We, too, can carry shame with us that keeps us from believing God’s healing love is for us. Shame comes up when we tell ourselves we aren’t good enough; when we allow ourselves to believe that we’ve done things that God can’t forgive, and when we forget that God delights in who we are.

Jesus refuses to allow shame to keep this woman from full healing. He calls her forward so that he can look her in the eyes and affirm her beauty and goodness and her place in his family. He calls her forward so that she can be made well.

Questions for reflection:

Are there areas in your life where you feel that you aren’t “enough”?

If Jesus listened to “the whole truth” about your story of pain and shame, what would you tell him?

Prayer: Lord, underneath all my busyness and distraction, is fear and shame. Would you help me trust that you will come to take away that fear and shame and make me well? Would you help me trust in your healing love?