Thoughts and Other Things

I’m still very much on the women’s month tip, so I’m relooking into female characters of the Bible. I was reading through Luke 8 and was struck by the sharp contrast between the two women it deals with near its end. We have the twelve year old dying girl, and the woman who’s been bleeding non-stop for twelve years. I’ve always read of these two women, but never reading their story side by side. The twelve year old girl is introduced to us by her father Jairus, who was a synagogue ruler. Firstly, the girl has someone, her sweet daddy, who was pleading with Jesus on her behalf. We know that she’s his only daughter, so she is daddy’s little princess and he wants absolutely no harm to befall her. Secondly, her dad is a man of power, a religious ruler of high status in that day, so she probably had rights and privileges, including an unearned honour and respect from the town’s people. We can tell by the amount of people that filled the house by the time Jesus got there. We later in the c...

In amazement and admiration he asks: ‘What is your wonder, oh woman? And where does it is stay? What makes you so beautiful, so remarkable, so, so rare, so similar yet so unfamiliar.’ She tells him: ‘Look not for it in my figure, you will not find it. Do not search for it in my fine clothes, it is not there. Nor is it in my eyes, my hair or my bottom; No, not in my stride, my smile or my bossom. Look further, jula . It dwells not on the surface, but is hidden deep within me; Like a diamond buried deep within the belly of the earth, So is my wonder. You’ll have to spend yourself to get to it; your strength and your time; not your wealth ( bhut’ blesser ). And when you reach it, when you’ve broken through the façade of ‘I’m fine,’ and gotten through the whirlwind of emotions, when you’ve dug through the frailties and insecurities; There will you find it, like a pearl shelled and nested at the bed of the ocean, there will you see my unfading beauty. There will you lear...