October 3, 2017 - - Luke 13:11-13 NKJV Suffering and praise

10 Now He was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. 11 And behold, there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bent over and could in no way raise herself up. 12 But when Jesus saw her, He called her to Him and said to her, “Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity.” 13 And He laid His hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God.

Luke 13

She was already glorifying God in her weakness. Bent down with a spirit of infirmity though she was, she got herself to the place of worship over those 18 years. And when Jesus healed her and her praise intensified. Healed or not, she praised God.

On Suffering, K. C. Haugk wrote:

The Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy loved the workers on his family's estate, so for a while he worked with them and shared their food and slept in their primitive cottages. But he was shocked when the workers told him, "We're not really impressed by your coming to live with us. You've got your rich father to fall back on. You can stop living in poverty any time you choose. But this is just what we cannot do. You just act as if you were one of us.

As Christians, when we meet Jesus, we meet God in the flesh. Jesus did not merely act as if he were like us. He suffered like us and for us. He even experienced the sense of being godforsaken that we may feel when we suffer.

We are never alone in suffering because God suffers with us. The idea of a suffering God is distinctively Christian. Perhaps because God is a suffering God, he is uniquely qualified to be the "Father of compassion and the God of all comfort." God is with us as one who understands pain and suffering from personal experience.

Kenneth C. Haugk "Don't Sing Songs to a Heavy Heart" p. 28

Father of compassion, when the suffering intensifies, please increase within the powerful Presence of Your Spirit so that whether or not Jesus heals me, I will bring You praise. Amen.