The Hem of His Garment

What It Means to Be Available to the Needy

By Sandy Mayle

My relationship with hems is problematic. Yes, those little folded edges sewn at the bottom of skirts or dresses. Oh, the arguments my sisters and I used to have with our mom, an accomplished seamstress, when she hemmed our clothing. Back then, miniskirts may have been in vogue… but not at our house!

Over the years, though, I grew to rely on Mom’s tailoring expertise. After her passing, I often pictured her laughing from heaven at my bumbling attempts with needle and thread—just to reattach a button. Hems? I do resort on rare occasion to hem tape (no sewing required). Outside of that, I just don’t do hems.

The Hem of His Garment

Oswald Chambers wrote about hems in his book So Send I You, which was compiled from lectures he gave at his missionary training college. Chamber’s words include us, as we carry out Christ’s mandate to “go and make disciples” (Matt. 28:19).

“When Our Lord is the Master of a disciple,” Chambers wrote, “no matter where he [or she] goes, His touch comes through [them] all the time. She only ‘touched the hem of His garment.’ The missionary is, as it were, the hem of His garment, and virtue goes out through the garment’s hem to the needy one who touched.”

Chambers is referring to the gospel story of the woman who suffered with chronic bleeding for twelve years (Mark 5:25–34). Despite seeing many doctors, suffering much, and spending all she had, she only got worse. But she heard about Jesus’s healing power and made her way through the crowd to come up behind Him and touch just the hem of His garment. And when she did, she was healed.