This tale is based on an incident in Mark ch 5 and involves a woman we'll call Sally..
SALLY by Mick
Sally had felt unclean for many years since her teens because of a trickle of blood ,and although she was generally liked by people, she sometimes noticed them looking at her as if they thought God had cursed her with the affliction for some reason, and she often wondered if it were true, as if she'd sinned somehow and made God punish her with a lifetime filled with blood-soaked rags..
No man would go near her of course, which added loneliness to her misery, and she cried herself to sleep many a night, feeling cursed and dirty and not as good as anybody else.
Some days were better than others, but on bad days the blood loss made her feel weak and tired, barely able to move.
It was on one of these days, as she lay on her bed weak and anaemic that she sank into terrible despair and buried her face in the pillow and tearfully sobbed "Oh God please help me.."
Later, as the day wore on, she heard an excited commotion in the street, so she slowly staggered to the door and saw a huge cheering crowd of thousands thronging round a young man at the centre.
From what she could tell, he was the new young prophet Jesus who'd made a name for himself by curing people's ills in the surrounding district.
"I wonder if he'd help a wretch like me?" she thought, and bravely staggered out towards the crowd, but it was moving with the young man and she could barely keep up, let alone push her way to the centre where he was. But she tried, oh how she tried, working her way inch by inch through the tight jostling chattering crowd.
Now and again she caught a glimpse of the mans back through the crowd, but try as she might she couldn't get any closer in her weak state, her heart began to pound and her breath began to rasp.
Still she fought her way painfully forward for what seemed like hours until she was barely a few feet away from his back, but he was still walking and didn't even know she was there.
In her exhaustion her sight began to grow dim, and as the noise of the crowd filled her ears and the jostling tumult buffeted her, she felt the last dregs of strength beginning to go as she began to faint.
In panic and desperation she summoned up enough strength to stagger three steps more towards the mans back, and with a final desperate lunge she fell forward with her arm outstretched toward him, brushing his cloak with her fingertips.
Gasping and half unconscious face down in the dust, she slowly became aware that there was total silence all around, and she raised her tired eyes to see the young man looking around and asking "Who touched me? I felt power being drawn out of me"....
"I did sir" she shyly mumbled.
"It's okay" he replied with a smile, "you're fine now"
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"...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. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth.He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering." 