Can I get a Miracle?

When the Miracle Takes a Detour

Imagine the scene. Your twelve-year-old daughter is dying. You are a respected community leader — a synagogue ruler named Jairus — and you have just done something that would have shocked everyone who knew you. You have fallen on your knees in the dirt in front of a travelling preacher and begged for help.

And it works. Jesus agrees to come. He starts walking towards your house. The crowd is pressing in. Every second matters, because your daughter is at death's door.

And then Jesus stops.

Someone else has touched him in the crowd, and he wants to know who. Your daughter is dying, and Jesus is having a conversation with a stranger.

That is the setup for one of the most extraordinary stories in Mark's gospel. And it has something to say to anyone who has ever prayed for a miracle and felt like God was taking far too long to answer.

Two People, One Story

Mark chapter 5 weaves together two healing stories in a way that feels almost uncomfortable. Jairus needs Jesus to heal his daughter. A woman who has been bleeding for twelve years needs Jesus to heal her. And their stories collide in the middle of a crowded street.

The woman's situation is worth understanding. She had been suffering from a condition that caused constant bleeding for twelve years. In first-century Jewish culture, this made her ceremonially unclean. She could not go to the temple. She could not touch anyone without making them unclean too. She had spent everything she had on doctors and only got worse.

"She's been to every doctor. She's spent all her money. She's been suffering for twelve years — the same length of time that Jairus's daughter has been alive."

That detail is easy to miss, but it is telling. Jairus's daughter had lived for twelve years in the home of a prominent, respected man. The woman had suffered for twelve years in isolation and poverty. Same timeframe, completely different experiences.

The Touch That Changed Everything

The woman did not ask for an audience with Jesus. She did not stand in front of him and make her case. She came up behind him in the crowd and touched the edge of his cloak. That was all.

And she was healed instantly. Twelve years of suffering, ended by a single touch.

But Jesus did not let her slip away anonymously. He stopped. He turned around. He asked, "Who touched me?" — a question his disciples found absurd, given that dozens of people were jostling against him in the crowd.

"Jesus knew the difference between the crowd pressing against him and someone reaching out in faith. He stopped everything to acknowledge her."

When the woman came forward, trembling, Jesus did not scold her for the interruption. He called her "daughter" — a term of deep affection and belonging — and told her that her faith had healed her. He gave her something the physical healing alone could not: restoration to community, dignity, and identity.

Meanwhile, the Clock Is Ticking

Now consider what this moment felt like for Jairus. His daughter is dying. Every minute matters. And Jesus has stopped to have a pastoral conversation with someone who, from Jairus's perspective, has already received her healing.

And then the worst possible news arrives. People come from Jairus's house with a message: "Your daughter is dead. Why bother the teacher anymore?"

It is hard to overstate how devastating that moment must have been. Jairus had done everything right. He had found Jesus. He had humbled himself. Jesus had agreed to come. And then a delay — someone else's needs — and now it was too late.

"Imagine being Jairus in that moment. You've done everything you can. Jesus was on his way. And now someone tells you it's over."

Do Not Be Afraid. Just Believe.

Jesus's response to the news was immediate and direct. He turned to Jairus and said: "Don't be afraid. Just believe."

Four words that are easy to quote on a greeting card and extraordinarily difficult to live out when your world has just collapsed.

Jesus then continued to Jairus's house, where the mourners had already gathered. He told them the girl was not dead but sleeping — a statement that was met with laughter. He cleared the room, took the girl by the hand, and said, "Talitha koum" — "Little girl, get up."

And she did. She stood up and walked around. And Jesus, in a detail that reveals his character, told her parents to give her something to eat. The God who raises the dead also remembers that a twelve-year-old who has been ill will be hungry.

What the Delay Reveals

The temptation is to read this story as a straightforward miracle account. Jesus heals two people, everyone is amazed, the end. But the structure of the narrative — the interruption, the delay, the apparent death — reveals something deeper about how God works.

Jairus needed a healing. He got a resurrection. The delay did not prevent the miracle. It upgraded it.

That is not a comfortable observation for anyone in the middle of waiting. When the prayer has not been answered, when the situation has gone from bad to worse, when it feels like God stopped to deal with someone else's problem while yours became terminal — the suggestion that God might be doing something bigger is not always welcome.

But the pattern recurs throughout scripture. God's timing rarely matches our urgency. And what looks like neglect or delay often turns out to be the setup for something we could not have imagined.

Do Miracles Still Happen?

The talk asked this question directly, and the answer was honest rather than formulaic.

"I believe miracles still happen. But I also think we need to be honest about the fact that not every prayer for healing gets the answer we want."

There is a tension in the Christian faith between believing in a God who can do anything and living in a world where people still get sick, still suffer, and still die. Pretending that tension does not exist helps nobody.

What the story of Jairus and the woman offers is not a formula for guaranteed miracles. It offers something more sustainable: a picture of a God who is present in the waiting, who notices the people everyone else overlooks, and who is not limited by what appears to be the end of the story.

The Woman Nobody Noticed

There is one more thing worth noticing about the woman in the crowd. She had been invisible for twelve years. Unclean, untouchable, unnamed. She had exhausted every human solution and had nothing left.

And Jesus stopped an entire procession — including the urgent errand of a synagogue ruler — to see her. To speak to her. To call her "daughter."

"Jesus didn't just heal her body. He restored her identity. He called her 'daughter' — gave her a name and a place and a sense of belonging that twelve years of illness had stripped away."

That matters for anyone who feels invisible. Anyone who has been suffering in silence while the world rushes past on its way to more important things. Jesus stops for the overlooked. It is one of the most consistent patterns in the gospels.

Holding On When the News Is Bad

Jairus had to walk the rest of the way to his house believing that his daughter was dead. He had to trust Jesus in the face of evidence that trusting Jesus had not worked. He had to keep putting one foot in front of the other when every rational thought was telling him to give up.

"Don't be afraid. Just believe." Those words were not a platitude. They were an invitation to trust beyond what the circumstances were saying.

That is not easy faith. It is the hardest kind. Believing when you have evidence. Hoping when the facts suggest otherwise. Walking with Jesus towards a house full of mourners because he asked you to.

Something to Sit With

Two people in this story needed Jesus. One had been waiting twelve years. The other needed help in the next few minutes. Both received more than they asked for.

If you are in a season of waiting — for healing, for breakthrough, for an answer that has not come — the story does not promise that your timeline will be met. But it does suggest that the delay might not mean what you think it means.

And if you feel invisible, overlooked, like your suffering does not matter to anyone, there is a God who will stop an entire crowd to look you in the eye and call you by name.

What are you waiting for right now? And what would it look like to keep walking, even when the news suggests it is too late?