Friday 23 August 2013

Thought for the week Thirteenth Week after Trinity

Bent over a fist full of twigs
twice daily, sweeping.
Bent beneath a load
of wood or care.
Keeping the rules that keep
a woman bent by burdens,
spent with weeping.
A woman is bent.
Surely you meant
when you lifted her up
long ago to your praise,
Compassionate One,
not one woman only,
but all women bent
by unbending ways.
Miriam Therese Winter

Luke.(13.10–17)
Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, ‘Woman, you are set free from your ailment.’ When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.
But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, ‘There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.’
But the Lord answered him and said, ‘You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?’
When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

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