Ordinary Time 
Pause
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me bring love.
Where there is offense, let me bring pardon.
Where there is discord, let me bring union.
Where there is error, let me bring truth.
Where there is doubt, let me bring faith.
Where there is despair, let me bring hope.
Where there is darkness, let me bring your light.
Where there is sadness, let me bring joy.
prayer attributed to St. Francis of Assisi
Listen
A swarm of people were following Jesus, crowding in on him. A woman was there who had been bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a lot under the care of many doctors, and had spent everything she had without getting any better. In fact, she had gotten worse. Because she had heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his clothes. She was thinking, If I can just touch his clothes, I’ll be healed. Her bleeding stopped immediately, and she sensed in her body that her illness had been healed.
Mark 5:24b-29
Think
She’d been bleeding for twelve years. That is a long time. Can you imagine how easy it would have been for her to just accept her destiny and give up? Yet… this lady had faith. After what had to have been 12 painful and agonizing years, she still believed. She still dreamed of life as it should be — “if only.”
“It’s just the way things are.” “Some things never change.” “That just isn’t how things work around here.”
It is easy to accept the discouraging words of others when we see something that isn’t right or just or the way God intended. It is easy to go with the status quo, to resign to the inevitable. However, like the lady in today’s passage, we must believe. We must continue to dream of healing and justice. It wasn’t accepting her condition as inevitable that brought her healing. It was her faith that “if only…”
When facing huge challenges, whether personal, societal, or otherwise, do we give up because it’s just been too long? Or do we hold onto our faith, fervently praying the prayer of the bleeding woman?… “if only…”
Dale Tadlock
Pray
Compassionate God, remind me today that you are the God of those who dream and have faith. Help me to never accept my own circumstances nor those around me as beyond your healing and justice. Hear my own cries of “if only” while also giving me the courage to be the answer to the “if only” cries around me. May it be on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.
Go
Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
Martin Luther King Jr.
