Mark 5:30 "And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone forth from him, immediately turned about in the crowd, and said, 'Who touched my garment?'"

As we know, it was the hemorrhaging woman who touched Jesus' garment and was healed. People were touching Jesus all the time, though, but only this woman (that we know of) drew healing power from Him by her touch. How did she do that? Jesus tells us that it was by her faith - "Daughter your faith has made you well" (Mark 5:34). This is the power of faith! We can actually draw upon Jesus' power by believing in Him! When we are fused with Him through faith, we do not even have to ask for what we need, we share so fully in His life and love we can draw on His grace as needed.

This can get tricky to think about, though, and we have to be careful. Jesus is not a "genie in a bottle" who we control with our belief in Him. He is, rather, the source of everything, of all power that exists, and He is love, so His power is the power of love. Because He is love, His power works for what is best for us. When we, through faith, merge ourselves with Him, we become participants in His will for Creation, including for us, and thus are able to draw on His power to accomplish His will, which is also ours. It is not Jesus doing what we want, it is us being so much a part of Him that we want what He wants, and therefore we are granted a portion of His power to accomplish it.

If this woman did not truly believe Jesus was God, she would not have been healed by her mere touch. In fact, she probably would not have even tried touching His garment, since she would have had no thought that this could heal her. The fact that she did think it could heal her showed her faith, and that is what drew His power. If we do not approach Jesus in true faith, trusting completely that He is God and wanting His will, our prayers will often not be answered the way we want, because we are then just asking for our will, without truly wanting His, and we are asking without true belief that He is God. It may be that what we're asking is His will for us, and is granted, but it also may be that He has something better in store, which we will be ready for when we give up our will, trust Him entirely, and merge ourselves with Him.

Also, last night, I was reading The Passion From Within and it describes the feeling Jesus had when He first instituted the Eucharist as similar to this - He felt His power going from Him and into the bread. The Eucharist, too, is Him sharing his power with us, and we can receive that power every day, helping to build our faith so we can become more like this woman who believed so strongly.