At My Wits’ End

I am sure you know that phrase in our language, “I am at my wits’ end!” To translate this for some Texans it is related to the sentiment, “I declare, you are working my last nerve!” Many times, lines like this are uttered just to be dramatic, but all of us know there are hardships in life that literally bring us to our wits’ end. We feel like we have tried everything, and we are desperate for a solution.

In the Gospel reading for this Sunday, the good news comes to us through the stories of two people who are desperate for a solution. The first is a man from the Galilean community where Jesus and his disciples are teaching and working. His name is Jairus, a man with an important position in the community: one of the synagogue presidents. He was desperate because his little twelve-year-old daughter was dying. He felt if Jesus would come put his healing hands on her, she would revive. The second is a woman who for twelve years had suffered hemorrhaging. She suffered through many doctors’ remedies but only worsened. Read and see how both of them are hopeful about Jesus even though they are near desperation.

Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet and begged him repeatedly, “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.” So he went with him.

And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.”
(Mark 5:22-28)

In a way, neither of them had any business approaching Jesus. Jairus set aside his pride as an official of the synagogue, his place within the traditional practice—coming to this outsider with a whole new spiritual message, and his dignity, as he falls at Jesus’ feet and pleads. The woman with chronic bleeding cannot with religious propriety approach a rabbi, given that her condition would have her labeled by Jewish law as “unclean.” She exercised stealth, confident she needed only to touch his cloak.

Neither of these two was thinking of what the rules were or what others would think, they just knew they wanted a different situation. They each felt that Jesus was the one who could bring relief. The little girl was only twelve, how tragic it would be for her to die right at the threshold of becoming a young woman. For all the years the girl had been alive, the other woman had struggled with the misery of her condition and had been under restriction socially because of her disease. It might well have been the role of Jairus to refuse the woman access to some of the activity of the synagogue. Both turn to Jesus.

We can and certainly should turn to Jesus. We should come to him, at our wits’ end, but also at our wits’ beginning and the middle too. Whatever our situation, every day we should fall at his feet and plead for connection with him. Every day we should reach out and touch his cloak for the life-giving energy he emits to those connected to him.

In our Savior is life; in the Guardian of our Souls is healing. We must not wait until circumstances of life are working our very last nerve. All the while we are doing our very best from our strength, we must see this very strength is a gift from the Generous one, and we should seek grace on top of that. Jesus is just powerful and kind enough to supply it. In the ways it applies specifically to you, he will in some way say to you, as he did to that persistent woman and that young girl, “Daughter, it is your faith that has healed you” and “Get up, my child.” In joy and peace, our lives resume.