Close

You may have noticed I haven’t been posting much lately. It’s not that I haven’t been inspired. Instead, I have been devoting more time to journaling and personal writing that I have been neglecting for, frankly, years. Since this requires pretty much all my extracurricular creative energy, I decided I’d sacrifice my consistency in posting for a season until I get in a better habit of writing privately again. Not putting an official moratorium on the blog or anything, but consistent posts won’t be happening for a while.

However, I wanted to share something that in many ways reflects my spiritual journey of late. The song below is done by a beloved band called Everybodyduck. Their lead writer/singer, whom I knew personally for a time, had an uncanny ability to sing stories in order to draw out amazing life applications. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in “Close,” which describes Jesus’ healing of the woman with the issue of blood from the perspective of a curious observer. When I hear this song, I have often pictured a music video that would switch between the singer among the crowd in Jesus’ day and the singer wandering around alone in a stained-glass church. I always thought that contrast would be powerful and appropriate. (Email me or leave a comment if you'd like to listen to the song - would be more than happy to share it with you!)

I have to admit that sometimes I identify more with the skeptic’s feeling of being an outsider than the woman’s wholehearted trust in a Man she’d never met. But then I realize that is a result of my approaching God with a skeptic’s heart – that He is somehow a begrudging Judge instead of the loving Father waiting to lavish gifts on those who know Him as their Abba.

This helps me remember.

I was pressed against Him in that sweaty, seething crowd
Fighting every step to keep my place
I had only hoped to hear Him speak
Yet now, thanks to the crowd
This Jesus and myself were face to face
My head was aching from the noise, my skin burned in the sun
Fatigue was setting in from the long walk
Then suddenly the crowd lurched as the Master turned and stopped
His eyes quickly scanned all of us as He began to talk
“Who touched me?” He demanded, but I could not understand
More than six of us against Him on all sides
Then a women pushed us all aside and claimed that she’d been healed
She admitted she had touched Him
Knelt down at His feet and cried

But I was close, and I was still the same
I was close, yet I felt nothing strange
With a simple touch, before my eyes
A life was rearranged
But pressed up against Jesus I was close
And nothing changed

She began to tell her story, the crowd hushed so all could hear
Jesus smiled as though He already knew
Slowly dying from a sickness, wracked with shame and all alone
But the crowd around her last hope
So thick she could not get through
She’d heard story after story of this gentle Nazarene
The healing power of God His to command
More than just a prophet, she believed that He was God Himself
She waded through the crowd, praying for one touch of His hand
The largeness of the crowd prevented her from getting close
But she kept on where most of us would have not
Convicted so completely that this Jesus was the King
Stretch through the mass to touch his cloak
One hand was what she sought

But I was close, and I was still the same
I was close, yet I felt nothing strange
With a simple touch, before my eyes
A life was rearranged
But pressed up against Jesus I was close
And nothing changed

Then Jesus turned His head towards me as though I’d asked out loud
The questions in my mind no one else knew
He quickly smiled then turned back to the woman and the crowd
“Daughter, go in peace,” He said, “your faith has healed you.”

Then all at once His words rushed through my head and clicked in place
The difference in touch simply that hers was made in faith
Clearly, the Healer has the right to choose who will be healed
But faithless contact I recalled
Now in my heart revealed

But I was close, and I was still the same
I was close, yet I felt nothing strange
With a simple touch, before my eyes
A life was rearranged
But pressed up against Jesus I was close
And nothing changed…