Pain can make us feel invisible. We don’t want others to see us when we are in pain because there is something about being vulnerable to others that makes us uncomfortable. We don’t think they will understand. They haven’t been through the same experience. They might think we are just complaining needlessly. They might judge.
So we suffer in silence. We isolate ourselves. We keep that hurt bottled up inside of us until it becomes a weight that weighs down upon our soul. It can even lead to depression. Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines depression as a “pressing down to a lower position.” Think about how a footprint leaves a depression in the mud. Is your emotional heaviness weighing so heavily on your heart that you feel stuck in the mud, pressed down to a lower position?
David suffered this type of anguish while he was fleeing for his life from King Saul. He was isolated from friends. In Psalm 88:18, he laments, “You have taken from me friend and neighbor—darkness is my closest friend.” I know I have felt that way during quarantine! I long for the fellowship of big groups of friends! I miss the fun of being around big groups of people. Isolation can be depressing!
David didn’t only feel isolated from friends. He felt isolated from God. In Psalm 88:14, he cries, “Why, Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me?” He was losing hope and felt that even God had abandoned him. Friend, do you feel as if God has abandoned you? Has your isolation made you feel unseen even by God?
There is also another person in scripture who thought she was unseen by God. She had suffered for twelve years with a bleeding disorder and had been told that no one could heal her. I think that after twelve years, I might feel that God had abandoned me, too. Jesus was her last hope.
The crowd was so huge around Jesus that scripture says they “almost crushed him.” In her frantic yearning for relief, the woman squeezed her way through the throng, sandwiched between bodies that practically crushed her own frail frame. Can you imagine her desperation? She felt sure that Jesus was unapproachable by her, that she was unseen in the crowd and unseen by Jesus. Just a touch. Just a glimmer of hope. Though she couldn’t get close enough to talk to Jesus, she reached out and brushed the hem of his garment with her fingertips.
And she was healed. She was not only healed, she was seen. Jesus immediately turned around and asked in Luke 8:45, “Who touched me?” Even the disciples were bewildered by his question and patronized, “Master, people are crowding and pressing against you.” But Jesus knew that he had bestowed peace to a tormented soul. He saw her affliction and knew the anguish of her soul.
David, too, found the same relief for his soul. Psalm 31:7 radiates his relief with the words “I will be glad and rejoice in your love, for you saw my affliction and knew the anguish of my soul.” Like the woman, like David, God sees you. He sees the affliction of your soul, the isolation of your spirit, and loves you fully. Touch the hem of his cloak, dear friend, but not with a casual touch. Reach out in desperation with all of the yearning in your soul and beg for healing. And I pray you will hear the words of Jesus in Luke 8:48, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.”