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Robin over at Pen­sieve has thrown down a mission…a chal­lenge if you will to find a post that was a favorite.  That’s hard to do when you’ve been blog­ging for a few years!  But then I ran across this one and knew.…it’s the one.  It’s from the Fall of 2007 and we were about to make a seri­ous tran­si­tion in our lives and didn’t even know it.

Hands in Need

This is my last month to direct the ele­men­tary area at church.  It’s a bit­ter­sweet deci­sion.  The church was tak­ing over our lives in an unhealthy way and I think tak­ing a break will help relax the house a bit.  How­ever, I find myself sick at my stom­ach think­ing about not being com­pletely involved in that area.  I found a love there that I had no idea I could have.  Every month we would con­cen­trate on a virtue and about 9 out of 10 times those virtues kicked my rear.  This month it’s Con­tent­ment.  We’re talk­ing to the kids about the dif­fer­ence between being happy with what we have, instead of feel­ing like we NEED to have more.  There’s a lot of talk about the dif­fer­ences between want and need.

This has caused my head and heart to do some deep think­ing (that’s rare for this shal­low gal!)  Maybe it’s because of mum’s cancer…don’t know.  I’m not think­ing so much as tan­gi­ble things that we may or may not want or feel like we need.  I’m think­ing more on a spir­i­tual level.  I am in no way a hanky-wavin’, pew-jumper but I do believe in the full gifts of the Spirit.  I don’t think you can live in a 3rd world coun­try and NOT believe and hold on to dear life to that belief.

I’m hav­ing a hard time putting into words all the thoughts and ideas that are bounc­ing around in my head. Bear with me as I quote a Scripture…

As Jesus was on his way, the crowds almost crushed him. 43And a woman was there who had been sub­ject to bleed­ing for twelve years, but no one could heal her. 44She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and imme­di­ately her bleed­ing stopped.
45“Who touched me?” Jesus asked.
When they all denied it, Peter said, “Mas­ter, the peo­ple are crowd­ing and press­ing against you.”
46But Jesus said, “Some­one touched me; I know that power has gone out from me.”
47Then the woman, see­ing that she could not go unno­ticed, came trem­bling and fell at his feet. In the pres­ence of all the peo­ple, she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed. 48Then he said to her, “Daugh­ter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.”

This woman had a want, but most def­i­nitely she had a need.  This desire was so strong that she went above the norm.  Above the accepted behav­ior to act in faith.  She needed to touch the Great Physi­cian.  She only touched his clothes and he felt the power leav­ing him.  Can you imag­ine how she felt when he asked, “Who touched me”?  I know I would have freaked!  Appar­ently she felt the same way cause she didn’t answer his ques­tion at first.  But in the end not only was she healed, but she was face to face with Jesus and he spoke to her.  I can’t even fathom the awe­ness of that feeling.

I had an expe­ri­ence once of that desire that supercedes what is accept­able.  I was 11 years old.  We were in Madras, India and lived about a cou­ple of miles from the beach.  We would take the bus since it was so close.  Usu­ally the bus sys­tem is used by the lower caste, so need­less to say, we always got some looks.  On one occa­sion, when we got on the bus there was only one seat left and it was next to a very dirty lady with a lit­tle girl on her lap.  I sat next to her and smiled.  I may have been the first white girl she had ever seen.  Her eyes were bug­ging out of her head and she looked like she might scream.  I didn’t want to make it any worse so I just stared straight ahead. Then out of nowhere she grabbed my arm and started rub­bing it with all her might.  After every cou­ple of rubs she would look at the bot­tom of her hand to see if any­thing came off.  She went after my hair next.  At that age I had long, corn­silk yel­low hair.  She was pulling my hair like there was no tomor­row.  Then she would rub her hand over her braid; try­ing to trans­fer my color to hers.  There was almost a pan­icked look to her face.  Like she wanted to get as much of it on her hair before I caught her and smacked her.  In that cul­ture, with me being white, I had every right to rep­ri­mand her for her actions. It was absolutely unac­cept­able behav­ior and a few onlook­ers were shocked and appauled.  She didn’t care…she needed to under­stand.  She couldn’t help herself.

Even at that young age, I felt like I needed to do some­thing to help her under­stand.  She didn’t need rebuke.  I only knew a few words of Tamil then, so I took her hand and clasped it in my hand.  I turned it over and over from the top of my hand to the top of her hand and said, “Rumba Nala (Very Good)”.  She smiled so big and we stayed that way until my stop.

That moment has taught me so many things at dif­fer­ent times of my life.  At 35, it’s remind­ing me of the lady who touched the hem of Jesus’ gar­ment and the need­ful desire she had.

Jesus wants to give us the desires of our heart, and he also knows what we need bet­ter than we do.  I want a lot of things, but I pray that I will step out in faith when that time arrives when I need to go above the acceptable.