Jairus’s daughter, and the only person Jesus ever called daughter
This series of Bible studies seeks to retell the stories of women who were divinely called and empowered to do great things. Many of them rose to the occasion, and a few very famously did not. Often, the tragedies and triumphs in their lives are missed, and their stories are told from perspectives other than with the honor and dignity they deserve.
After excavating their narratives from millennia of obfuscation, now meet the freshly restored, valiant, vivid (and sometimes villainous) women of the Bible.
Death Has No Sting: Jairus’s Daughter and the Bleeding Woman
Jairus’s Daughter is among a cloud of witnesses the writer of Hebrews wrote of, who encourage us in our walk of faith. Christians are familiar with many of the men numbered among those witnesses, as their stories are told and retold from the pages of scripture. But what about the women?
Why would Jesus stop in the middle of the pressing crowd to wonder who touched him? Why would he wait until a nameless, unclean woman admitted she had? And why would Jesus call this woman his daughter, while a wealthy synagogue ruler fretted beside Jesus over his own daughter?
In the delay, as one daughter was saved, another was lost. So why would God the Son pour out his resurrection power and spiritual cleansing on a dead child?
This thirty-page book includes the retelling of the stories of Jairus’s daughter and the woman with the bleeding disorder, a fifteen-question Bible study, and link to a twenty-minute multi-media presentation of their accounts. Neither Jairus’s daughter and the woman with a bleeding disorder are ever even named, yet their stories continue to have lasting impact on our understanding of God’s grace.
A Girl and a Woman on Opposite Sides of the Social Spectrum in Their Day.
Jairus’s young daughter, on the cusp of puberty, and the bleeding woman, her life ebbing away, had both entered liminal spaces. The young girl was no longer a child, but not yet a woman. And as she lay in her sickbed, she drifted ever closer through another liminal space, that mysterious domain between life and death.
Similarly, it seems the woman with a bleeding disorder found herself perennially unclean, legally homebound, for whatever and whomever she touched would become unclean. Yet to remain home without a doctor’s care would be resigning herself to her own death. She occupied that narrow ledge between the clean and the unclean, and she too was edging closer to the brink of death.
Neither person is named, neither person had power, wealth, influence, or any other kind of leverage. Yet God considered them worthy of love, healing, and life eternal.
Nearly forty free Bible studies on a woman in the scriptures are available through signing up to the newsletter below. What’s included:
- Access to all the Bible studies that have been made available so far.
- One new study each month.
- Early announcement of new books, published by the author.
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