Women

At the well 

and quietly hemorrhaging. 

     Jesus has an encounter with two different women at two different times who were suffering

in two different ways. 

     One was at Jacob's well minding her own business and he asks her for water. He tells her everything about herself and she senses he must be some kind of prophet. He tells her that

she has had five husbands the guy she is  living with is not even her husband. He must have sensed a perpetual state of dissatisfaction. Why dump five husbands---he tells her he has

something that will completely satisfy and make her whole- and never will she thirst again, which may be a sort of metaphor for a perpetually dissatisfied life. 

She can't get no satisfaction. Until she met Jesus. She is then turned into an evangelist because she runs and tells the whole town about the guy who knows everything about her and offers something that will quench her soul's thirst forever. 

   This woman was surely the town slut- five husbands, give me a break. Lucky to have one.

After this encounter with Jesus, no longer. She is then the herald of the great news. 

  There is another woman he met not quite on purpose whom he nonetheless made whole. This woman too was a town outcast likely. She suffered a medical condition of the perpetual issuance of blood, which likely was a female disorder, not unknown or even too uncommon, 

in which she perpetually had some flow of a mensus. Probably a light flow that never went away.

     As it was ritually unclean for any man to have relations for anyone in this state she was likely not married. She had the condition for 12 years. If she was at one time married her husband likely left her- and one can only image the heartache she lived with and under.

    She just gets a glimpse of his robe and grabs it with the extreme faith that merely touching him he could make her well. Immediately he felt a power flow from him, an energy, and it cured her. Immediately. She was made whole immediately. Miracle-but also every day stuff for Jesus, because the power of all creation is within him in perfection. 

   So this woman who struggled with heartache, loss probably, disappointment and anger  probably, who spent all her money on doctors, so she was broke, met Jesus and was restored 

to humanity where she could have a family, have a husband and likely then could conceive children.  

   Jesus cared profoundly about making women whole, satisfied, and dignified, restored to places of honor in society and with potential for healthy families.

If we all could only follow suit. Who would ever stop talking about him.