Jesus was teaching in a synagogue on the sabbath. And a woman was there who for eighteen years had been crippled by a spirit; she was bent over, completely incapable of standing erect. When Jesus saw her, he called to her and said, “Woman, you are set free of your infirmity.” He laid his hands on her, and she at once stood up straight and glorified God. (Lk. 13:11-13)
Scripture tells us that on one particular Sabbath, Jesus chooses to heal a woman who has been “crippled by a spirit…bent over, completely incapable of standing erect.” We understand perfectly His act of healing and compassion for this poor afflicted woman; Jesus is the Lord of mercy and love, after all. What is not so easy for us to understand, however, is why the God of the universe would allow this poor woman to suffer eighteen long years before allowing the miracle that would cure her.
On a practical level, we realize that there was the issue of Jesus’ public ministry not beginning until many years after the woman was first “crippled by a spirit.” But on the other hand, the Lord of all Creation, to whom “even the demons are subject” (Lk. 10:17), could have chosen to prevent this woman’s affliction until much later in her life—say, one year before Jesus’ healing ministry would begin. Why not cure her after a much briefer period of suffering?
The thing about suffering that has been going on a really long time—whether that suffering is physical, financial, emotional, or interpersonal—is that it is in our human nature to tend to lose hope of ever actually receiving the resolution to our prayers which we seek. Most of the time we perhaps persevere in our prayers for healing…but the truth is, our firm conviction that Jesus really intends to heal us can begin to diminish as time goes on, with no signs of resolution in sight. We resign ourselves to the idea that perhaps a miracle is just not God’s will for us. After all, as Christians, we know that God’s “ways” are not our ways (Is. 55:88).
We all know the experience of praying to find a spouse, praying to conceive a child, praying to find a job…and receiving from God the answer, “no”—or at least, “Not right now.” So in the case of the afflicted woman, what was the Lord teaching her—and teaching us now—by obliging her to wait so very long for healing to come?
Of course, one reason that God might have allowed the woman her long-term suffering is to teach the rest of us a lesson in never losing hope in what the Lord can do, no matter how long we are made to wait or how contrary the evidence may seem. This is not the same as pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking, or denial of modern science. The reason hope does not contradict human experience or knowledge of medicine is that we are not placing our hope in a cure when doctors have told us that we have no chance of healing. We are not placing our trust in the sure knowledge that the Lord will take away our cross. We are trusting that Jesus will take care of everything. Which may include unburdening us of our suffering…or it may include giving us the graces we need to carry our cross. (If option two doesn’t sound like a great option, let’s remember that when Jesus helps us, He “yokes” us to Himself, thereby taking on our troubles as His own and making our burden “light” [Mt. 11:30]). It is this in which we hope, with a hope so vibrant and firm, that we might even call it “certainty.” It is our steadfast and unshakeable faith in divine providence that keeps us peaceful, content, joyful, and detached.
Whether this afflicted woman had this level of firm trust in the Lord, Scripture does not say. But we do know that she was a “daughter of Abraham”—whose own faith is the very model for us all—and we also know that Jesus is “not able” to “work many mighty deeds” where there is a “lack of faith” (Mk. 6:5; Mt. 13:58). Judging by the fact that curing a woman after eighteen years of affliction qualifies as a “mighty deed,” we can conclude that indeed this was a woman of firm and unshakeable faith.
In fact, hers was a faith that would have been made all the more firm and unshakable than had she been afflicted not for eighteen years, but for just one. Which tells us, perhaps, the reason that God allowed her affliction to remain in place for so very long. We can imagine that on the other side of her suffering, seeing her previous pain from a broader perspective, and having witnessed the good that came from it, the woman would not have chosen to go back and change a thing, even if she could. Her faith in all those eighteen years of waiting for an unknown future would not have been one that consisted of wishful thinking or denial at all, though certainly she suffered, and undoubtedly, she was sorrowful. We imagine that hers was a faith so certain that, whether or not she ever stood up straight again, it would have enabled her to hope and trust firmly in the Lord whom she knew would take care of everything.
Like the woman healed of her eighteen-year affliction, let us “hope against hope” in our own long-term suffering with the faith of Abraham (Rom. 4:18), and trust in Jesus with certainty that He will take of all our cares.
Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen. (Heb. 11:1)
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