Faith, Jairus and his daughter

A lot of this was inspired by watching this incident on The Chosen, which you can view here:

At the beginning, Jairus comes round the corner towards his house, and suddenly hears the wailing of the mourners. You can see the penny drop that the worst has happened- he changes from someone with hope to completely to losing everything.

This is where it is difficult to forget how the story ends, and to put ourselves in his position. 

Right then, it was game over. Raising someone from the dead was not a thing - it was correct to say that the teacher was not needed any more. 

Jesus asks Jairus not to be afraid, to believe in him. Jairus does so, but in The Chosen, there is a moment where you can see him almost debating what to do - caught between Jesus and the Pharisee telling Jesus to go away. Jairus could have agreed with the Pharisee and could have told Jesus to go away, and maybe Jesus would have done. What could Jesus have said to change his mind? I can imagine that if Jesus had said he was going to raise his daughter from the dead, Jairus would have thought he was a complete lunatic- healing someone is one thing, but no-one raises from the dead.

So at that moment, why did Jairus allow Jesus into the house? What did he think Jesus was going to do? I don’t know. He just clings onto Jesus at that moment without any conscious thought about how he thinks it will pan out.

And this is what I think faith looks like. So often I I don’t believe because I can’t imagine what the end result could possibly be. Unlike Jairus, I say ‘thank you for coming, there’s nothing more you can do, sorry to bother you’. Or I have a picture of what I expect Jesus to do, and how he might do it. Whereas what Jesus asks of me is that I believe in him - cling on to him without any idea of what he will do. Trust in him, the person, even when there can be no good outcome. 

Hebrews 11 says that 'faith is being sure of what we hope for, being convinced of what we do not see.' (NET). Not to rewrite it, because that would be bad, but this makes sense to me: 'faith is being sure of who we hope in, being convinced about him who we do not see.'