Desperate enough?

Luke 8:45-46 NKJV

And Jesus said, "Who touched Me?" When all denied it, Peter and those with him said, "Master, the multitudes throng and press You, and You say, 'Who touched Me?'" [46] But Jesus said, "Somebody touched Me, for I perceived power going out from Me."

Desperation is a great initiator of faith...

Jesus' faith-detector picked up on the desperate touch of this sick lady among the crowd.

As her hand surreptitiously grasped the hem of Jesus' garment, pressing through the throng around the Saviour, she instantly received her healing.

Of course she had to do this incognito because for 12 long years she had been ritually unclean.

Leviticus 15:19-20 NKJV

'If a woman has a discharge, and the discharge from her body is blood, she shall be set apart seven days; and whoever touches her shall be unclean until evening. [20] Everything that she lies on during her impurity shall be unclean; also everything that she sits on shall be unclean.

Ladies imagine being in that woman's position - not able to mix in society, "contaminating" everything you touch.

Reduced to abject poverty, having spent everything on doctors, she was still not any better.

Plus, none of the modern sanitary products existed back then - just menstrual cloths - rags that needed to be washed and changed (the filthy rags mentioned in Isaiah 64:6).

Any such woman would have been driven to desperate measures!

Perhaps God, in His mercy, let her become that devastated, because otherwise she would have never reached out to Jesus.

Maybe, prior to her illness, she was self satisfied, with a reasonable income and was uninterested in God?

Whatever her spiritual condition she was the only one in the vicinity who really "touched" Jesus with faith.

I look to myself this morning, am I desperate enough to reach out and extract that power from Jesus - power to overcome myriad issues, sicknesses, needs for myself and for others.

Does Jesus ask anew in my prayer time "who touched Me?"