A Double Healing

Mark likes to envelop an event within a surrounding one. What often happens is that the intervening event adds significant insight to the one that envelops it. Our passage follows this pattern, as Mark inserts an account about a woman who has been afflicted with a flow of blood for 12 long years between an account about Jairus who is desperate about the near-death condition of his 12-year-old daughter. In so doing, Mark shows that the afflicted woman exemplifies the kind of faith that Jairus is supposed to have—the kind of faith that we all should have. It’s faith that, when suffering and trials come, trusts that Jesus is the only one who can heal us from all that afflicts us. This includes all the trials and sufferings of life, like sickness and disease, even death itself.