When It Feels Like God Is Doing Too Little

In both the story of Jairus’s daughter and the story of the woman with the bleeding condition (see Mark 5: 21-43), Jesus allows prolonged suffering, longer than either would have chosen. And yet those delays are not signs of neglect but part of his healing work. By allowing desperation to deepen, he brings healing not only to the body but also to the heart.

When it comes to healing, God often uses two kinds of means: the ordinary and the miraculous. We see both in this passage. For those of us in places like Nashville— sometimes called the “Silicon Valley of health care”— this resonates deeply. Many in our churches and communities labor each day to ease suffering. Thanks to modern medicine, a cardiologist can guide a tiny camera through a heart, place a stent, and send a patient home by dinner. These marvels are ordinary means, yet still gifts from God.

And still even the best medicine has limits. Each Sunday, pastors look into congregations filled with people who, like the woman in Mark 5, have tried everything. After twelve years of suffering, her health has worsened. She has spent all she has. She’s exhausted and isolated. Her story mirrors the ache of many today.

Having served as a pastor for thirty years, I’ve witnessed the toll of unhealed suffering. Often people turn to Jesus only when every other option has failed. But here is the good news: Even when we come to him as a last resort, Jesus meets us not with disappointment but with compassion. He welcomes our desperate prayers even when our faith feels tattered and small.

For the bleeding woman, physical suffering is only part of her pain. Her condition has left her ceremonially unclean, cut off from touch, community, and dignity. While Jairus approaches Jesus publicly and with status, she comes in secret—ashamed, unnoticed, and uncertain of her worth. Her faith is real, but hesitant. She doesn’t stand tall before Jesus. She reaches from behind, hoping not to be seen.

But Jesus refuses to let her remain hidden.

In a culture where women are often known only by their relationships—daughter of, wife of, mother of—this woman has been known only by her affliction. For twelve long years, she’s had no advocate, no voice, no name that carries affection. But Jesus gives her one. With a single word—daughter—he restores what suffering has taken. He names her not by what she’s endured but by what she’s worth.

This is more than a healing. It’s a royal decree.

Her identity isn’t explained, earned, or negotiated. It is bestowed. This is how the Mercy King reigns: by restoring what has been stolen and naming those who feel forgotten. He does not merely heal bodies, he reclaims souls. He wields power not to dominate but to mend and make whole.

Jairus’s need is no less urgent. His daughter is dying. A respected synagogue leader, he humbles himself before Jesus with a plea that sounds like both a father’s anguish and a disciple’s hope: “Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.” Every second matters. He has rushed through the streets, Jesus by his side. And now, as Jesus stops to tend to another, Jairus waits— helpless, watching the clock.

And then the news comes: “Your daughter is dead.”

What must that moment have felt like? The urgency had been real. The hope had been fragile. And now it seemed too late.

But Jesus operates on a different timeline, one in which delays are not denials but designs for deeper healing. By the time they reach the house, mourners are already weeping. When Jesus says, “The child is not dead but asleep,” they laugh. It sounds absurd. But Jesus sees what they cannot: Death is no match for his mercy.

Only a King with cosmic authority can speak to death as though it were sleep. Jesus doesn’t panic; he commands. His calm isn’t indifference, it’s sovereignty wrapped in love. He reigns over time, over decay, and even over the grave.

This scene echoes the grief and disorientation many of us feel in our own seasons of suffering. When God delays, when prayers go unanswered, when hope dims, we wonder whether he cares at all. The silence can feel unbearable. In moments like these we may resonate not with the heroes of faith but with those like Job’s wife. After losing ten children in a single day, she cries out in anguish, “Curse God and die!” Her words are often judged harshly, but who could endure such loss without despair?

Her pain is real. Her lament, raw. And while her words may falter, they reflect a wound that the Mercy King understands.

A surprising and sobering example of feeling abandoned by God in the midst of deep faith can be found in the life of Mother Teresa. Known around the world for her tireless work among the poor in Calcutta, she privately carried a burden few knew about— a heavy and prolonged sense of spiritual emptiness. In letters to her spiritual advisors, published after her death, she describes what she calls a “dark night of the soul,” marked by years of sensing God’s absence.

“I feel that God does not want me, that God is not God, and that he does not really exist,” she once wrote.

For Mother Teresa, the silence wasn’t occasional, it was constant. She longed for Jesus’ presence, yet often encountered only a sense of distance and void. It felt at times as though Christ had hidden his face. And yet in the absence of emotional reassurance, she continued to pray, serve, and persevere. Her life became a quiet, unwavering witness to a faith that often shines brightest not in clarity but in darkness.

Even in her struggle, she found a kind of fellowship with Christ—not through relief or resolution but through shared suffering. Her ache echoed Jesus’ cry on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Identifying with that cry, she discovered a mysterious solidarity, a deeper connection with the one who bore abandonment for our sakes.

Her story reminds us that faith is not always accompanied by felt assurance. Sometimes it looks like showing up, loving others, and holding on, especially when God feels silent. Mother Teresa’s perseverance bears witness to this: that Christ’s redeeming love will ultimately transform all sorrow, even when it seems hidden in the moment.

This is the paradox of faith: It endures even when it cannot feel. And the question it leaves us with is this: When we face our own dark nights of the soul, will we press into God, or will we pull away?

To live in despair or to die in unbelief is a tragedy far deeper than suffering itself. When we place conditions on our faith, expecting God to meet our expectations before we extend trust, we risk disillusionment. We begin to relate to him not as children but as consumers.

It’s like a child at the doctor’s office. Imagine them squirming and crying as a parent gently restrains them so a nurse can administer a shot. In that moment, the child feels confused, maybe even betrayed. Why would someone who loves them allow this pain? But the parent knows this brief sting is a small price for something far greater: health, protection, long- term good.

In the same way, our suffering may feel like abandonment, but often it is love we don’t yet understand. God is not indifferent. When it seems like God is holding us down or holding us back, in reality he is simply holding us—often unseen, always securely. What feels like absence will in time reveal itself as a deeper presence.

We may think he is doing too little.

But he is doing far more than we can comprehend.

Taken from The Mercy King: How the Kindness of Jesus Heals Your Sin, Shame, and Weakness by Scott Sauls.