Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8).

“Please come put your hands on my dying little girl and heal her,” Jairus asked.  So Jesus went with him.  A large crowd followed.  And a woman … (Mark 5:23-25).

The waiting is the hardest part: waiting for lab results, for the doctors to evaluate them, for the doctors to finally get to you and give you the news that may well overturn your world, your life.  Waiting for a surgery, for a relationship to heal, for a community to recover and make its way back towards health, for a job to open up, for the phone to ring.

Waiting, hoping, that mercy will come in time.

A dying little girl: the death of a child is probably life’s most searing experience.  But Jesus has agreed to come to Jairus’ house!  But now, slim hope turns back towards despair for Jairus: This crowd, why can’t they wait?  At least they’re up and on their feet, at least they can wave at Jesus, cry out, try to get his attention—my little girl lies motionless, silent, the color and life draining out of her.  Come on, Jesus, please, could we keep moving?

Then Jesus stops.  He scans the crowd, looking, looking, looking.  A woman steps forward, obviously terrified to have her situation become so very public.  Her story spills out: bleeding, for twelve years, no doctors can help (although all submitted their bills), all her funds exhausted.  Her surreptitious tracking of Jesus through the crowded streets, the sudden opening, the touching of his clothes, the strange sensation that her bleeding has stopped, that her suffering has ended.

A brief conversation: she tells her story (“the whole truth,” Mark tells us), then Jesus speaks two short sentences (sentences I bet she never forgot) and proceeds on towards Jairus’ home.

But no: some friends of Jairus approach: “Your daughter has died.  Why trouble the teacher any further?”

We say that “Justice delayed is justice denied.”  Is the same true for mercy—does a delay in mercy mean that mercy has been denied?

It would seem so.  The little girl has clearly died; if she were sleeping, they could have awakened her.  The delay!  That woman—she at least got to reach adulthood!  Those others in the crowd, yes, they, too, were sick or in trouble, but not dying.  If they hadn’t gotten in the way, Jesus might have made it in time.

Mercy doesn’t operate according to our schedules and calendars.  If we love mercy, and love the Giver of all mercy, sometimes we have to wait.  And learn to notice where mercy is already at work around us.  “Wait” is not “No”: “wait” means draw near, come closer … know that mercy is stronger even than death.

For what mercies are you still waiting?

To whom could you show mercy, even as you wait for your “mercy delayed”?