Lent Day 28: Handicapped Woman

Pause

Think back over the past few weeks or months. How has God shown compassion to you? Thank Him how He loves you so well.

Read & Journal

Read Luke 13:10-17. Meditate on what you’ve read by mulling over these questions:

• What do you learn about Jesus’ character from His interactions with the woman? To the leader of the synagogue?

• What does this passage reveal about Jesus’ mission or purpose?

• How do you see Jesus entering into human brokenness in today’s verses?

• When have you seen someone respond to human need, even when it went against societal norms or traditions? What, if anything, did that experience teach you about God?

Ponder

Once again, Jesus stands among the religious leaders of the day, sees a woman in need, and responds with compassion. And once again, the religious leaders rail against Him for breaking with tradition and healing on the Sabbath. What could and couldn’t be done on the Sabbath was a point of much contention for the Jewish leaders of the day. In most cases, giving medical help on the Sabbath was only acceptable if it was an emergency.1 Clearly, if the woman had managed for 18 years, one more day wouldn’t make much of a difference, at least in the eyes of the religious leaders.

But Jesus looked at the situation differently. Here was a Jewish woman bound by her malady. The religious leaders would untie their animals on the Sabbath and lead them to water, but they were unwilling to do anything that might release the woman from Satan’s bondage. They saw the obvious need of their animals, but they ignored the woman’s obvious need. Was the tradition more important than human need? Jesus seemed to ask. Jesus had come to do the will of God—and doing God’s will cannot be contained to specific days. As Robert Stein writes: “If it is right to perform God’s will on the first six days of the week, how much more should God’s will, mercy, and love be performed on the Sabbath.”2

Much of Jesus’ earthly ministry seemed to be focused on revealing the deeper truths of what it means to live in the kingdom of God. In God’s kingdom, human need is more important than traditions. Truly seeing people and taking the time to meet them where they are, to minister, to bear their burdens or “untie” them from those burdens is of ultimate importance. Doing God’s will and loving others is always appropriate, no matter the day or time.

1.NLT Study Bible Notes .

2.Robert Stein. New American Commentary: Luke. Broadman and Holman: Nashville, Tennessee, 1992.