There is this thing that happens as you age - you start to sense how you are moving to the background. Your preferences aren’t the most tended to, your voice isn’t the loudest, your presence isn’t the most sought after. Some of that is good and right and healthy. Some of that is the idolatry of youth. The ones who take center stage are rambunctious, unjaded, vivacious. They haven’t been suffering for twelve years - they haven’t been doing anything for twelve years.

So it makes sense that the spotlight that day was on Jairus’ little girl, just twelve years old, and the urgency of her plight. But Jesus zeros in on one who has already faded from attention.

Who touched Me?

It seemed crazy for Him to ask. His own disciples were bewildered. “What do You mean? Everyone is touching You.” But He stopped...

And He looked around to see the woman who had done this.

She knew she’d been found out. What are the odds that someone who lived unseen would get called out in a mob? She was afraid - “fearing and trembling” - but she came. She fell down before Him. She told Him “the whole truth”.

You know what Jesus did?
He called her “daughter,” a term of relationship.
Daughter, like the one Jairus had at home.
Daughter, like the twelve year old whose plight compelled her dad to come and beg.

Daughter,
your faith
has made
you well;
go in peace
and
be healed of your affliction.

Jairus went and found Jesus, but Jesus stopped to find her.
He knew who had touched Him, but He wanted her to know that He knew.
He wanted her to see Him seeing her.
This is what connection is.
This is what heals - being in a room with someone who knows you’re there and cares that you’re there.

Little girls grow up.
But we still need to know that we matter.
Jesus’ actions reassure us that we are daughters, that our needs hold weight.