A Few Thoughts on Healing in Luke 8

Here’s a few thoughts on how Jesus heals in Luke 8.

The woman with a chronic bleed had been bleeding for 12 years so it was a regenerative anemia. Her bone marrow was producing enough new Red Blood cells to keep up at some level. I’m assuming that this was some sort of menstrual bleeding caused by a persistent estrogen producing ovarian follicle which would include other symptoms of menstruation like cramping.

So she had persistent vaginal bleeding, cramping and some level of anemia which would have resulted in poor oxygenation of the tissues and chronic fatigue. I feel sorry for the poor woman.

When Jesus healed her the blood flow was immediately stopped and as she herself reports she was immediately healed. That immediate healing could mean that all of her symptoms were gone… the blood flow, the cramping, the fatigue and the anemia.

The 12 year old girl was probably dealing with an acute problem, certainly not the chronicity of a 12 year condition. The list of conditions that young people suffer is a lot shorter than the list that old people suffer from. It was probably not organ failure, cardiovascular or cancer. She probably had an infectious problem. A lot of people then and now suffer from gastro-intestinal infections and respiratory infections. Rapid dehydration from vomiting and diarrhea or lungs that are filling up with pus.

Whatever the problem was she was at the “point of death”. Usually point of death looks like poor coloration to the tissues (purple not pink), coma or agonal breathing. When I get a patient like that there is usually not much that can be done. Whatever her final symptoms were her Daddy new he was about to lose her and in an act of desperation ran as fast as he could to find Jesus. His expectations were probably pretty low but when you are about to lose the most precious thing in the world to you, you’ll run after even the smallest chance.

When the family heard the news that she had died they fell apart. They probably had a lot of questions like… Jehovah we have devoted our whole life to you, how could you let this happen? Their friends were probably offering solace like… she’s in a better place. Those are true words but probably not enough to stop the flow of tears.

Jesus enters the room with just Peter, James, John and the parents and says don’t cry she’s just asleep. The text says they laughed at him. I imagine that their sad emotions turned to indignant emotions. Like… don’t play games with us Jesus we know what dead people look like.

Jesus takes their little princess and says “arise”. She gets up immediately and Jesus turns to her parents and says, “get her something to eat”. Like everything’s back to normal now. Go clean the house, mow the lawn, etc. Just another day for Jesus but certainly not just another day for that family.

Their problem was that they really didn’t understand who Jesus was, but that day they knew a little better.