The healing of the blind man in John 9 is one of my favorite passages and favorite healings, and this is my other favorite healing passage: Jarius’s daughter and the woman with the issue with blood as told in Mark 5:21-43.

Red as Blood

The similarities are interesting. Jarius was a ruler of the local synagogue, a man of importance and probably some influence. His 12-year-old daughter was a light of his life. She was very ill and he was probably terrified. He pushes through the crowd and falls at Jesus’s feet and pleads, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live.”

Jesus agrees to go and the crowd surrounding them goes too. In this crowd is another female who needs healing. Whereas Jarius’s daughter has been well-loved for 12 years, for a dozen years this woman has not been cared for in love. She has been an outcast. She has an issue of blood, making her unclean. Her father was not a ruler of the synagogue with some wealth. The passage says she had spent all she had on doctors and was not better. She is a poor outcast. How different the last 12 years had been for her compared to this little girl that the crowd is going to watch be healed.

The woman with the issue of blood hears about Jesus and thinks “If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.” She slips through the crowd and touches his garment. And on that one touch, she is healed.

Jesus feels the touch and turns and asks “Who touched my garments?” The crowd stops; the disciples ask how he could know who touched him with so many people around. She steps forward fearful and trembling and now she falls at his feet and tells him the whole truth. And what does he say?

“Daughter.”

Chills.

Here we have Jairus. His daughter is dying. But Jesus loves His daughter too. Though she likely cannot worship with others because her flow of blood makes her unclean, she is loved by her Maker. She knows that she cannot ask Jesus to touch her (touching her would make a rabbi unclean). She only wanted to touch the garment he wore. So great was her faith in his power. He heals her and tells her that her faith saved her. From being dead to her society and dead in sin, she is now brought back into fellowship with her community and her Father.

Rosy Red Cheeks

Jesus goes on to Jarius’s house where the mourners have already started their death weeping and wailing because Jarius’s daughter is dead. With only a few disciples around and her parents, Jesus resurrects this little girl and and she rises, alive. So, she too finds fellowship and restoration with her father.

Jarius’s daughter and the woman with blood. Two very separate women. But their differences are less important than their similarity: that they were beloved daughters restored by Jesus.