I am not what I might be, I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I wish to be, I am not what I hope to be. But I thank God I am not what I once was, and I can say with the great apostle, “By the grace of God I am what I am.”
John Newton

Reaching For Help

Reaching For Help

Reaching for Help

by Kurt H. Asplundh

“If only I may touch His garment, I shall be made well.” (Matt. 9:21)

Such was the secret thought of the woman in the crowd that thronged the Lord as He went to the house of Jairus.

Twelve years she had suffered an issue of blood, a debilitating incurable hemorrhaging. She had spent all her livelihood on physicians to heal her and it had not helped.

Now she reached out to the Lord for help, but secretly, brushing the hem of his robe with her hand, unseen in the crowd.

She reached out for help, believing that the Lord could heal. Therefore, virtue or power passed to her from Him.

Her deliberate act was unseen, but not unnoticed. She had hoped for the cure but not public notice of it. Now she could not hide what had happened, and trembling, falling down before the Lord, she confessed before all the people why she had touched Him and how she was healed.

The Lord sent her away comforted. “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your affliction. (Mk. 5: 34).

Later, when the Lord entered the villages or cities of the Gentiles, they laid the sick in the streets and begged Him to allow them just to touch the hem of His garment. And as many as touched Him “were made perfectly well, ” we are told (Matt. 15: 36; Mk. 6: 53). Perhaps this woman’s faith and confession had become known beyond the borders of Israel.

It has become known to us, centuries later, and carries a message that is filled with new and personal meaning through the opening of the spiritual sense of the Word. All the Lord’s miracles of healing, we are told, represent and signify the power of the Lord to heal the spirit.

It was spiritual healing Isaiah called for when he said of Israel: “The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faints. From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it…. Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes. Cease to do evil, learn to do good” (Is. 1: 5, 6, 16-17).

This describes our world today. “The whole head is sick!” False opinions; false reasonings, false principles have multiplied. We are confused about right and wrong; dizzied with false values, and our mind fevered with self-interest and greed. And if the head is sick, the heart, too, is faint. There is little courage for justice, little strength of conviction, and too few to stand for religious principles.

We need help. Just as this woman needed to be healed, each one of us needs to be healed. We are afflicted, too.

She had a hemorrhaging, a constant bleeding of that life-giving soul of the body. Spiritually, we bleed when we are ignorant of the truth, when we have no defense against the perversions and the attacks of the hells against us. The life-giving essence of the spirit spills out instead of recirculating to bring health and strength to our life. We live on, then, in a spiritually weakened condition, twelve years, twenty years, sixty years.

As we realize something is lacking, even deeply wrong with our life, we may turn first to the “physicians” of this world; the worldly philosophies, the pragmatic doctrines, and man-made options. Like the woman who wasted her savings on the doctors, we may devote all our energy and time trying to find some answer, some way of changing our life. But we end up desolate and disillusioned.

Finally, when our discouragement grows and nothing seems to be working in our life, we may be ready to reach out to the Lord. Then, like the woman of the Gospel story, we join the throng, some curious, some devoted, some hoping for a miracle. The Writings reveal the rest for us.

“All the diseases healed by the Lord represented and thus signified the spiritual diseases that correspond to these natural diseases…. Spiritual diseases can be healed only by the Lord, and,” we are told, “by looking to His Divine omnipotence and by repentance of life” (AE 815: 5).

The woman touched the hem of the Lord’s garment and was healed. Touch is a means of communication and reception. We know this from our own experience. The hand gives and takes. When strong affections are felt, there is a desire to communicate them by the sense of touch. Even our forms of language reflect this when we say we are “touched” by another’s concern or love and “embrace” the ideas of others we agree with.

The Lord’s touch carries a special power. It signifies a communication or reception of Divine power, through which, we are told, “is the healing of the interiors, which is salvation” (AC 10023: 8).

There was a crowd around the Lord when this woman touched His robe and was healed. Many must have touched Him. What was different about the woman’s touching and theirs?

Her’s was deliberate, premeditated, and done with a hope of His help. The others touched Him accidentally, or out of curiosity, not expecting that it would affect them at all.

This is an important difference. She wanted to touch Him, believing she could be healed if she did. Listen to this remarkable teaching from the Writings: “The interior things of man put themselves forth by means of external things, especially by the touch,” we are told, “and in this way communicate and transfer themselves to another….” And then this important statement is added: “In so far as the will of the other is in agreement and makes a one, they are received” (AC 10130). Our inner loves and feelings can be communicated through touch, but they are received only when there is a oneness of will. Haven’t we all experienced the rejection of a proffered hand, an intended embrace, or a conciliatory kiss when the other is not yet ready to agree with us and perhaps harbors a feeling of anger or resentment for something that has come between us?

So the power for good within the Lord is received only with those who want good themselves. If our will is to do His will, His life is miraculously joined to ours.

If we are to be spiritually healed by the Lord, we must want to be healed. We must reach out to Him with a deliberate purpose.

Further, we must have confidence that He can heal and save us. We must approach Him in the spirit of the words: “If only I may touch His garment, I shall be made well” (Matt. 9: 21). “For first of all, ” we are taught, “it is to be believed that the Lord is the God of heaven and earth, and that He is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, infinite, and one with the Father” (AE 815: 9). So, when the woman was healed, the Lord said to her: “Your faith has made you well…” (Mk. 5: 34). Later, He would say to Thomas, the doubting disciple: “Do not be unbelieving, but believing” (Jn. 20: 27).

No one inherits a genuine faith. Our first faith in the Lord is borrowed. We believe in Him because others do, others in whom we have confidence.

When the Lord was on earth, there was another reason many had a kind of faith in Him. It was because of the miracles He did. The Writings actually call this kind of faith “miraculous faith, ” that is, a belief based on the evidence of miracles. The Christian Church was built up by miracles in the beginning. Without miracles to convince people of the power of the Lord, few would have joined the church.

The case is different today. We live in a skeptical age. Nor are there miracles at this day. Even if the man of today were to be convinced of the truth of the church by miraculous events, his convictions would soon fade. It is against the laws of Providence that man should be convinced or compelled to believe the things of religion.

There must be some means other than miracles by which we come into a new state of faith called “saving faith.” The first faith with all of us is called “historical” or “borrowed” faith. This afterwards becomes a saving faith “when man by his life becomes spiritual, ” we are told (AE 815: 9). Again, we are taught that “the faith by which spiritual diseases are healed by the Lord can be given only through truths from the Word and a life according to them” (AE 815: 5).

How can we approach the Lord to touch Him and to be touched by Him? The Writings give this definite answer: Only through the Word which He has given. The Word conveys natural teachings. Yet, these natural or “ultimate” truths serve to clothe the Lord’s deeper wisdom and purpose which are, for the most part, inscrutable for us. Like garments, such truths clothe the Divine will and present it to the sight of our understanding. Natural truths from the sense of the letter of the Word are powerful ultimate forms in which spiritual and celestial truths may rest. Here, too, they have their effect on our lives. Such teachings as the Commandments, the Lord’s words in His Sermon, contain a world of meaning. But the direct teachings of the natural sense clothe everything that is within; they are the garments of the Divine wisdom.

The woman touched the garment of the Lord and was healed. “A woman laboring with an issue of blood was made whole when she touched the skirt of the Lord’s garment….” This, we are told, “signified that health went forth from the Divine extremes or ultimates, for there are strength and power in the ultimates of good and truth which are from the Divine…” (AC 9917: 3).

We, too, need to seek the Lord. “If only I may touch His garment,” we may say, “I shall be made well.” What does that mean? What do we have to do? Just as the power to heal the woman came from the Lord’s garment, so the Divine power for all good is communicated to us through the natural truths of His Word, the garment of His Divine being.

Reach out for it, believing, and it will effect miraculous changes in your life.

Remember the Lord’s teaching: “If you have faith and do not doubt…all things, whatever you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive” (Matt. 21: 21f). Through a sincere faith in the Word and our desire to receive its teachings we get in touch with the Lord and His saving power.

The Lord is always near, within easy reach. There are always teachings just for us, suited to our understanding and ready to apply. They are there in the Word if only we will reach for them.

Sadly, not all the life of religion is sincere. The Lord saw how the scribes and Pharisees did their good works for show, enlarging the borders of their robes to be seen. The robes and borders here mentioned have a similar signification to the hem of the Lord’s garment. In the Writings we are told that the scribes and Pharisees “talked about, and applied to life and to their traditions many things from the ultimates of the Word.” This is what is signified by making broad their phylacteries and enlarging the hems of their garments. Yet they did this only “that they might appear holy and learned” (AE 395: 11).

The world is never without its hypocrites. We, too, may talk about and apply the teachings of religion “to be seen of men, ” but if this is the case these teachings then have no effect on our spirit, nor do they heal our life.

The woman with the hemorrhage of blood came behind the Lord, mingling with the crowd, to reach out for His garment. She made no show of her act, but rather tried to hide it.

So we must learn to serve the Lord with quiet obedience, faithful self-compulsion, and daily performance of our responsibilities. We should not boast of our achievements like the proud Pharisee, or announce to the world how much we have suffered and given up to do the Lord’s will. There is no merit to be claimed for our efforts. Our strength is from the Lord.

Neither can we remain “closet Christians.” The Lord called upon the woman who had been healed to give testimony before all the people. We, too, should be willing to speak of the Lord’s power in our lives and be unashamed of our religious faith. Did not the Lord teach that we should not be “ashamed” of Him and His words (Mk. 8: 38)? If our faith has made us whole, if we have enjoyed strength from the Lord in facing the temptations of life, the Lord calls on us to bear witness and to rejoice in His salvation.

The message of this miracle is that there is power in the teachings of the Word. These teachings are the hand of the Lord reaching out to all of us. Like the hand which is the extension of a man’s life, they carry the power and love of the Lord which is His life. When we reach out to take His hand, the power is communicated, transferred and received.

We read in the Writings about “touching:” “`Touching’ signifies communication, transfer and reception…because the interior things of man put themselves forth by means of external things, especially by the touch, and in this way communicate and transfer themselves to another…and in so far as the other loves the person, or the things which the person speaks or acts, so far they are received” (AC 10130).

Because of this signification, the laying on of hands has been, from ancient times, symbolic of a communication and reception of a blessing. For this reason, too, we read so often how the Lord on earth healed many by His touch, took up infants and children in his arms, laying His hands upon them in testification of His blessing of all innocent states. “By the `laying on of the hand’ we are told, is signified “the communication and reception of Divine power, through which is the healing of the interiors, which is salvation” (AC 10023: 8).

Our search for the Lord if we wish to seek Him out for help is not difficult. He is in our midst, clothed with a garment of holiness. We see Him in the Scriptures and in the Heavenly Doctrine. The Lord has presented Himself by the Word to the natural mind in each of its degrees: to the sensual degree in the Old Testament Scriptures; to the natural degree in the New Testament; and to the rational degree in the Heavenly Doctrine contained in the Writings. When we have furnished our mind with knowledge drawn from this “letter” of the Word, the Lord will give us the light to see the inner sense of His teachings.

The Lord’s healing of the woman was a miracle, indeed. Yet even more wonderful is the promise it holds for each one of us. We, too, can be miraculously saved from the weakness of our hereditary nature and be given a new health and strength in our life.

How remarkable it is to think that the Lord is aware of our presence in the crowd that throngs our natural world; that He knows of our reaching out to touch Him in our hour of need.

“Who touched Me?” He asked. When all denied it and the disciples were amazed at what He said because of the crowd, He still insisted: “Somebody touched Me, for I perceived power going out from Me” (Lu. 8: 46).

So will He reward every sincere effort we make to live by His Word. “Be of good cheer, ” He says. “Your faith has made you well. Go in peace” (Lu. 8: 48). Amen.

Lessons: Ps. 145: 14-21; Lu. 8: 41-56; AE 815 (sections)