Little Girl, Get Up

Jairus was there the whole time.

On Wednesday we watched Jesus stop in the road for a woman who had been bleeding for twelve years. While He stopped, a father was standing in that same crowd.

Jairus was a ruler of the synagogue. A respected man. He had reached Jesus first, fallen at His feet, and begged Him: “My little daughter lies at the point of death. Come and lay Your hands on her, that she may be healed, and she will live.” (Mark 5:23)

Jesus went with him. And then He stopped for someone else.

Every minute Jesus spent with that woman was a minute Jairus didn’t have.

While He was still speaking, men came from the house. “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Teacher any further?” (5:35)

Too late. Don’t bother Him anymore.

Jesus didn’t let those words settle. As soon as He heard them, He turned to the father. “Do not be afraid; only believe.” (5:36)

Both commands are present tense in the Greek, the kind of verb that keeps going. Keep refusing the fear. Keep believing. Jesus was asking Jairus to hold on for the whole walk home, one step at a time.

At the house the mourners were already wailing. When Jesus said the child was only sleeping, they laughed at Him. So He put them all outside and took her father and mother, with Peter, James, and John, into the room where she lay.

The law said that anyone who touched a dead body was unclean for seven days (Numbers 19:11).

Jesus took her by the hand.

“Talitha, cumi.” Little girl, I say to you, arise. (5:41)

Mark kept those two words in Aramaic, the everyday language Jesus spoke, so we can still hear what that room heard.

She got up and walked. She was twelve years old.

Twelve years of bleeding for one daughter. Twelve years of life for the other. Jesus received them both on the same afternoon, the unclean woman first and then the ruler’s child, and there was enough grace for both.

Then He told them to give her something to eat. He had just raised her from the dead, and He was thinking about whether she’d eaten.

First the leper, then the woman, now this little girl. Each time, the law said His touch should make Him unclean. Each time, life went the other way.

Jesus heard “too late” and kept walking.

Has someone told you it’s too late to trouble the Teacher?

On Wednesday: the man in the synagogue.