Jairus is a leader at the local synagogue. His twelve-year-old daughter is gravely ill. He comes to Jesus and begs the Rabbi to heal his little girl. Jesus agrees, but he’s delayed along the way when he stops to heal a hemorrhaging woman. Then word comes to Jairus that it’s too late. His daughter is dead.
Jesus ignores their words and tells Jairus to just believe. Apparently, Jairus does.
When Jesus arrives at Jairus’s house, the mourning for his daughter’s passing has already begun. Dismissing the crowd, he leads her parents and three disciples to her body.
He takes the dead girl’s hand and tells her to get up. Much to everyone’s shock, she does. Then she walks around, very much alive.
We don’t know what this girl experienced in the spiritual realm when she was dead or what her life in the physical realm was like afterward.
But she must certainly have lived with an appreciation for her father’s strong faith and the knowledge that her second chance at life is because of Jesus’s power over death.
She experienced Jesus’s healing power, in part, because of the faith of her father. Do we have that kind of faith today?
[Discover more about Jairus’s daughter in Mark 5:22–43 and Luke 8:40–56.]
Learn about other biblical women in Women of the Bible, available in audiobook, e-book, paperback, and hardcover.
A lifelong student of the Bible, Peter DeHaan, PhD, wrote the 1,000-page website ABibleADay.com to encourage people to explore the Bible. His main blog and many books urge Christians to push past the status quo and reconsider how they practice their faith in every area of their lives.