GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 5:28
Purpose
Some sage has said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never get there.” The professional baseball catcher, player, and manager of the New York Yankees, Yogi Berra, supposedly said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you might end up someplace else.” In Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice said to the Cheshire Cat, “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” The Cat replied, “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.” Alice said, “I don’t much care where—.” “Then,” the Cat said, “it doesn’t much matter which way you go.”
Purpose is important and powerful. It puts forward an idea, plan, or suggestion for consideration. President John F. Kennedy said, “Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.” In his famous book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey wrote, “Begin with the end in mind.” In his book, The Purpose Driven Life, Pastor Rick Warren shows how to live out one’s purpose and move to a successful life.
In St. Mark’s Gospel, the evangelist provides an example of the focusing drive of purpose in the life of an anonymous woman who had suffered from a hemorrhage for twelve years. She sought out every physician she could afford, but she grew steadily worse. For some reason, this woman from Caesarea Philippi happened to be in Capernaum when Jesus and his disciples arrived. She heard about Jesus and the wonderful miracles happening around him. Working through the crowd around Jesus, she approached him, “For she was saying, ‘If I may touch even his garments, I shall be healed.’” (Mark 5:28)
There are many questions about this story yet to be answered: Was she seeking the wrong thing—just to touch his garment as if it held some magical power? Was she seeking something from Jesus rather than for Jesus? Was she thinking that some ritualistic act could bring the desired results? The questions aside, purpose motivated this woman to approach Jesus, to press through the crowd, and to reach out her hand. Some writers point out that the verb in this instance is in the imperfect tense, so it could be translated, “she kept saying,” as if she were clarifying the purpose to herself.
However one reads this account, it demonstrates the significance of purpose in faith—“If I can even touch him.”
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