When we are children, we imagine endless possibilities for our play. With our imagination, we can be astronauts, chefs, royalty, warriors—the options are limitless. We imagine that we are capable of whatever we can come up with. As we get older, our capacity for imagination diminishes. We no longer take the time to dream up scenarios of what might be. We get bogged down by reality and lose the purity of imagination.

As we grow older, our understanding of what God can do reflects this dwindling of creating boundless worlds within ourselves. We begin to limit what we believe God can do for us and impose human restrictions on God’s power. This brief passage from Matthew’s Gospel gives us two examples of adults who imagined that God’s power is truly infinite and were proved right because they believed so deeply in God’s saving power. Their faith allowed them to visualize a world in which the worst thing that had ever happened to them was a bump in the road rather than the end of the story.

Jesus responds to their faith, acknowledges how meaningful it is, and demonstrates that God’s power is what they imagined and so much more. Faith can be challenging when faced with dark and difficult times, but imagining the world as we know God desires it to be can aid us in bringing about the kingdom of God on earth. This kingdom sees mourners comforted and sorrowful rejoicing; it is a vision for the world constructed by the imagination of an incomprehensible, eternal, all-loving God who desires joy and compassion for all creation. This is the vision both the hemorrhaging woman and the official could see and participate in through their undeterred faith.