"the maid arose"

 Taking a leaf out of Joyce's book, this morning I turned to our book Stories of Healing: Jesus and his followers to research a healing in this week's Bible Lesson on Christ Jesus.

Stories of Healing: Jesus and his followers, page 69 showing Jesus greeting the crowd upon his return 

from Gadara west across the sea of Galilee to Roman-occupied Capernaum.

The story occurs in Matthew 9 and it's about the healing of a 12 year old girl who had died. Her father, a man in charge (a "ruler") in the local synagogue, was distraught. But he was probably one of "a great multitude" who "followed [Jesus] because they saw his miracles" (John 6:2), the most recent of which was the way he had healed a man of paralysis (Matt 9: 2-8) and a woman of an chronic (12 years) health problem related to blood (Matt. 9: 20-22). 

Because the mourners at the girl's house treated Jesus with disrespect when he announced that she was not dead but merely sleeping, the Master sent them packing. Our book explains that according to Jewish customs:

    "when someone died, people visited the person's family to show their love and to help them. The usual mourning period...was seven days. Jews also followed certain rituals to show their grief. People who were mourning wore clothes made of sackcloth--a rough, dark-colored material made of goat's or camel's hair.... Immediately after a person died, the family hired "mourners" (usually women) to weep and wail..."        p. 268

Soon the girl was alive and well. 

Marjorie Macartney's poem "If Jairus's daughter had spoken" in the August 1986 issue of The Christian Science Journal offers a nice insight into this healing:

If Jairus's daughter had spoken

Marjorie Macartney

Jesus said I was not dead.
He knew the light of Life shone in my heart.

The voice of Truth, with awakening touch,

Spoke with dominion, "Maid, arise."

That Word of God brought me, not back,

But forward to the revelation of where I'd always been,

Always am, always will be--living in God.

I do not live again but never died.

The warmth of resurrection melts the frost of fear,

Love is the pasture where His lambs skip fearlessly.

Only the myth of mortality is consumed,

Never the one, the ever-present Life.

Imagine what an impact this healing would have had, not only on the girl's family and friends, but also on those who worshipped at the local synagogue. This was indeed proof "of divine Love casting out error and healing the sick" as noted by Mary Baker Eddy in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 135.

Julie Swannell