In today’s passage, Mark paints a portrait of a woman’s extravagant love & fierce devotion to Jesus. Jesus silences her critics, affirms the beauty of her gift, then curiously declares that “wherever the gospel is preached...what she has done will also be told...”

In today’s passage, we see Jesus stepping between a woman experiencing condemnation because of her sin, and those condemning her. In doing so, Jesus invites the woman, her accusers, and us into the ultimate freedom—freedom from the sin that binds us; freedom in Christ.

In today’s passage from Luke, we find a twelve-year-old Jesus staying behind in Jerusalem to learn from the teachers in the temple court. After 3 days, Jesus asks his anxious parents: “Why were you searching for me?” He could ask us the same thing: why and where do we search for Jesus?

We believe in an all-powerful God, but is he powerful enough to heal our cancer? What about our addiction? Family and relationship tension? Racial injustice? Unrepentant sin? Why does Jesus heal the Centurion’s servant? Because he gets out of the way…because he trusts God...because he invites Jesus to heal him.