• For a dozen years the father had enjoyed the beauty of his daughter's face and the tender touch of her precious little hand. But that was all a memory now as he watched the agony of her inevitable death.
  
• When the little girl was born a certain woman started suffering from a bloody disease. For the next twelve years she wondered why the Lord allowed all the pain and waste of money.
  
• Both of these had unknowingly been heading towards a conversation with the Master on that street. Within minutes He would wipe away their anguish with his kind and powerful words.
  
• Who of us can understand why one or another suffers for long, for short, increasingly or abruptly? None of us, of course. And it is this seeming randomness of suffering that can be disconcerting. But passages like this remind us that with God there is no such thing as a random event.
  

Jesus specifically said that what was happening to Him was fulfilling prophecy . . . and how did the disciples respond? By fleeing! How illogical is our fear many times. Just like the disciples, we create erroneous expectations and fly to the mountains when life doesn't match up. Our hopes should be anchored in the pure and simple meaning of the Scriptures, not in what we or anybody else extrapolates from them. (Matt 26:56)