After a while you get used to your situation. But you never get used to the stares.

In time, you forget about your misshapen body. But when someone’s eyes avert after meeting your own, you remember.

That’s when you realize that your condition is more than a daily nuisance. You are a public eyesore. You are a person to be avoided. Everyone views you with pity or revulsion, or both.

You are on the outside looking in. You are different. Your crooked back is not just uncomfortable to you; it makes others uncomfortable around you.

So you learn to cope. You try not to stick out. You enter late, stay in the background and leave early.

Hearing that a local celebrity is returning, the town is electric with anticipation. You are as anxious to see him as everyone else. Slipping in unnoticed, you hang on his every word.

He pauses for a moment and looks intently at you. Or is it your imagination?

“Woman, come here,” he said. Attention is the thing you fear most. Does he really mean for you to stand up in front of all those women and men? Trembling, you obey. Gathering your crooked bones, you make your way to the front.

He looks at you. Sensing your embarrassment and fear, he smiles. “Today, you are set free from your sickness.”

He touches you. Instantly you feel the life returning to your crooked shape. Cautiously at first, you raise your shoulders, and, unbelievably, you stand up straight. For the first time in 18 years, you are whole again. Your hands involuntarily raise in joy and thanksgiving.

But your joy is short‑lived. The sound of celebration is quickly quelled by words of condemnation. Quieting the noisy crowd, the moderator speaks directly to you: “There are six days for work. Come to be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.”

Instinctively you hunch over and slink toward your seat until another voice booms, “You hypocrite! You permit us to untie an ox on a holy day; why don’t you allow us to untie this woman from her bondage?”

At this, your accuser was humiliated, your community was amazed, and your reproach was removed. And we, two millennia later, are still grappling with the lessons of that day, preserved for us in the 13th chapter of Luke’s gospel.

We are appalled by the religious leader’s callousness.

A woman was healed and he was indignant. She got bent into shape, and he got bent out of shape. How could he be so short‑sighted?

If we are honest with ourselves, we acknowledge that we religious‑types are sometimes infected by his disease. Like him, we can forget that traditions are here to serve people, not the reverse. God help us remember that our churches should be places where broken people are made whole, not where imperfect people play pretend.

Mostly, however, we are encouraged by Jesus’ compassion. Our brokenness may not be as apparent as hers, but it is equally painful and debilitating. Whether hampered by past hurts or craven fear, sincere doubts or stubborn habits, painful failures or lingering illness, Jesus loves to bring healing to us at the point of our deepest hurt. And for that we, like the woman in our story, cannot help but praise and thank God.