I’ve been watching through The Chosen. Unlike most TV shows, it is not something I can binge in a few days. Every single episode gets me teary, and sometimes I find myself gulping in air and trying not to sob. There’s just something about seeing these stories that I know so well, and have read a hundred times, play out on screen. I know this is not completely from the Bible. It does not replace my devotional time. It is man’s depiction of what could have been happening – but wow, it just makes it come alive for me.

Yesterday I got to the episode where Jesus heals the woman that had been bleeding for 12 years. The thing I love about how these stories play out in this show is that we get a glimpse into what life might have been like for each character in the “before Jesus.” This woman had spent 12 years going to doctors, trying many things. She had spent all her money, was unmarried, and considered unclean. I don’t know if we can really comprehend what that meant for her in our context today. She had no way of caring for herself, no community – even cast off by her family, and was not allowed to go to the temple. Her life was already hard enough being born a woman at that time, but this made her the lowest of low.

In desperation she seeks out Jesus. We know from the story in Luke and Matthew that she touched the fringe of his clothes and immediately her bleeding stopped. What we don’t think about is how hard it would have been for her to get that close to him. In the show she says, “Just one thread…just the fringe…just his garment.” She pushes her way through the crowd – a crowd that she makes ceremonially unclean by allowing her body to come into contact with theirs – and barely touches his garment. Instantly she is healed. Jesus stops in the middle of it all and says, “Who touched me?”

She must have been terrified to admit what she had done. Her desperation had driven her to touch Jesus at any cost – when she was not supposed to be touching anyone. She knew there was nothing else that was going to heal her. You can almost hear her thoughts of, “What have I done?” We know that Jesus responds to her in love and praises her faith. When we see this in Luke and Matthew, we are reading the story after the whole thing has happened. We start the story knowing she will be healed and praised for her faith. But she didn’t. She’s in it real time.

She started it with a history of being taken advantage of, of having hope dashed on every level, in loneliness and abandonment, and with the ever present label of unlovable. She had reached a point where she would risk anything and everything to touch “just one thread,” knowing the severe punishment if it all went wrong.

Just one thread.

I have access to Jesus every day, every hour, every moment. Not just one thread, but all of him. Ephesians 3:12 tells us we have boldness and access to Jesus with confidence by faith in him. In John 14 Jesus tells us he will not leave us as orphans, he sends the Holy Spirit, who lives in us and gives us access to God at all times. In Matthew 28 he says, “I am with you always.” At at any point I can call on the name of Jesus, commune with him, hear him, know him. I can ask for healing, for peace, for joy, for strength. He comes alongside and never leaves.

Yet I live my life, often, as though I am that woman before she knows about Jesus. Lonely, feeling hopeless, like I must rely on myself because no one else will help. This is not true in any way in my life – I am surrounded with family and friends who love me. But sometimes the enemy worms his way in and I start to believe those lies.

Sometimes there are things that no one here on earth could actually help with or change – things that need the miraculous. Those are the times when my faith gives me the ability to ask my Father face to face. I do not need to lower my gaze – he will raise my head and look me in the eye, with no shame, and remind me of who he is. I am not limited to forcing my way to him and risking it all to touch just one thread. I have the invitation to climb into his lap and ask for exactly what I need, and I can do it all without fear of rejection, punishment, condemnation, or reproach. I am his, He sees me.

Sometimes I need to reach that stage of desperation, where there is no one or nothing else I can rely on, to come back to the place where I really belong – at the foot of Jesus, reaching up in awe to touch him, knowing he is the only real hope. I am thankful for a Father who knows what I need in each moment to bring me back to him so that I can live in abundance and joy in what he has for me.