Luke 14

It takes so much energy to tend to an illness or a wound.  When I burned my arm recently, it took longer to get dressed in the morning because I had to deal with bandages and wound care.  My mom gets frustrated with the time it takes to sort her medicines and tend to her dialysis and keep up with simple day-to-day care when her body doesn't instantaneously do what her brain tells her body to do.

So when we read in Luke 14 that Jesus healed the man with dropsy, it's lovely to see that He "let him go" or set him free.  The man finally had rest [sabbath] from his wearying illness. 

And when an illness has weighed you down, it seems an even lovelier prospect to have that rest, that freedom.




Also, that bit about where people sit at the dinner table when they've been invited to a party?  This is not a Miss Manners section of the Bible.  True, it's nice to be nice.  But what's more important here is that Jesus, being found in appearance as a man, humbled himself to death, even the death of the cross (Philippians 2).  And then He was "invited up higher" where He would have glory.