Seas.

For the last 4 days, if I have been in my house, I have listened to exactly ONE song.
Over and over again.
On repeat for 4 days.
It’s not a Christian song. It’s by my probably favorite artist. It’s from The Great Gatsby.

 

I was in a wedding this weekend and had to play piano in it. Naturally, then, days before the wedding all I did was play that song on the piano. Over and over again. Listen, I’ve played piano for almost 19 years, but….um…haven’t consistently practiced in, let’s say…..6 years. So I needed a little work.

Therefore, when I heard that song from Gatsby, there was a line in it that caught my attention, particularly due to the timely application of my life.

I had just had this fantastic devotion time where my soul (and maybe I admit my eyes) shed a few tears over the indelible love of Christ.

The line, then, that sliced me right through is this:

“And I’ll sing from the piano, tear my yellow dress, and cry and cry and cry over the love of you.”

 

And while yellow is not my color so I therefore never hardly wear it, I found myself singing from the piano, crying and crying and crying, belting out who knows what over the love of him.

See, there is another line in the song that fueled said piano session that also went acutely right with my devotions:

                “Because you’re a hard soul to save with an ocean in the way, but I’ll get around it.”

Do you ever feel like that? That you’re a hard soul to save with an ocean in the way?

I do. One thing I find myself praying over and over again is for softness. A softness of heart towards Christ, a softness of heart towards those who need kind words, and softness in my relationships. Being sharp is easy for me. Softness requires Christ.
I pray against bitterness—which is a hardening of your heart—the opposite of softness. Bitterness makes you like a rock. Unlovely.

Even as I type that I realize it is probably a harsh thing to say.

But I say it to myself, too.
Because I don’t want to create an ocean for the Lord to get around. And yes, I realize we are all putty in God’s hands and he can mold us into whatever and ocean or not he can get through just as easy, but I don’t want to add more issues to my list for him to clear away, you know? He doesn’t need another ocean to bridge.

I think that devotion touched me so because I could easily imagine myself in the shoes of the character in the story.

Mark 5:27-32. “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. At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, ‘Who touched my clothes?’

‘You see the people crowding against  you,’ his disciples answered, ‘and yet you can ask, “Who touched me?”’ But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it."

I think the crying started then.

This lady had had her issue for 12 years.

That’s more than a decade, kids. That’s a long time.
And in that day she would have had to live outside of the city. People wouldn’t have been able to live by her, talk to her, socialize with her, touch her.
She was alone.
People would cross the street when she came near. They would turn away so as not to look.
She was unclean.

She hadn’t been “seen” in 12 years.

Have you ever felt unseen?
I can only imagine that there is probably a difference between feeling unseen (which I guarantee all of us women have felt) and actually BEING unseen.
No doubt in my mind she knew both of those.
Knew both of those as if it was another issue she needed healing from. Another death she lived in.

I won’t feign that I know her trauma. But I try to understand.

Already in tears over her, my crying continues as I see his response.

Imagine: Here she was; desperate.
She wasn’t looking for a show, she didn’t need other people to know she had gone to him. She didn’t even need him to know.
After all, he wouldn’t want to know her, touch her, heal her anyway.
Right?
Wasn’t he like all the others? Wouldn’t he condemn her too?
So in her agony she finds the crowd. Blends in so as not to be seen. Maybe she had even concealed her identity so she could get close enough without causing a stir.
It was going to be easy. A touch and run.

She fades into the masses and finally gets close enough. “If I can just touch his clothes….” She thinks.

She reaches out.

Whoa.

Immediate freedom.

No longer unclean.

No longer an outcast.

No longer necessary to remain unseen.

And then, in classic Jesus form, as she is no doubt walking away, he turns around.

“Who touched me?”
He wants to know.
His eyes scan the crowd.
His disciples think he has gone crazy.
“There are all kinds of people around! You think someone actually touched you? No way, man,” they say to him.
But see, here is the difference that Jesus knows about the world: There are people who reach for him, and there are people who just bump into him, lay claim to him, grab at him, vie for his attention, for his power.

People who need their death healed reach. People who want his power grab.

She was reaching; she needed him to heal her in her darkest areas, her area of shame, exile.

But then we see how Jesus is different than all the others:

He turns, looking for her; he wants to see her.
He was not angry that the “power had gone out” from him. HE JUST WANTED TO SEE HER.
Because he doesn’t believe in mass healings, he doesn’t believe in nameless faces.

Jesus is about individual encounters and the healing of personal problems. Even the ones nobody else dares to look at. The wars that wage in our minds, souls, and bodies do not shock him or make him run.

They make him coming running after us.

Knowing her new reality of healing, yet still thinking in a castaway mindset, she turns herself in. She goes to Jesus, “trembling with fear” and throws herself at his feet (verse 33).

And what does she get?

Softness.

“Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

Whoa. He didn’t take it back. He didn’t say, “Get away from me, you scum of the earth; how dare you make me unclean!” which, doubtless, is what she was expecting: you don’t tremble with fear when you are expecting to hear niceties.

But no. “You can keep it. Freedom and peace, it’s mine and now I give it to you.”
That’s what he says.

That’s what he says to you, too, Wolfies.

And what else could you possibly want? Freedom. Peace. With God and with mankind.

I guess I cried and cried and cried at the piano because, well, I know it. I know what it’s like for Jesus to come into those messyplaces of my life and say, “I’ve come to give you freedom—freedom you can keep.”

There is a picture I saw on a blog once and the phrase in the picture popped into my head as I was contemplating this passage. I saved it to my computer thinking that if I ever were to get married I would paint this somewhere in our house.

But now, well, now I think it has another meaning because, really, isn’t this what Jesus did to her?
Isn’t this what he does to us? When he gets around our oceans, when he looks to see who reached out to him? When he sees us, even when nobody else sees us?