I just cannot get over Jesus’ calling this woman forward. Luke notes that Jesus was teaching in the synagogue. There was a woman there who had been sick for eighteen years because of an evil spirit, and she was bent over double. But the woman apparently did not come straight to Jesus. She did not speak for herself. Jesus was teaching, and then he stopped to call her over to him.

I wonder about that woman. Was she content to listen to the words of the great teacher? Was she, perhaps, waiting until Jesus was finished with his lesson to catch up with him and ask him for healing? Or was the woman outside an open-air synagogue, not even listening to Jesus when he saw her and called her over? All we know is that Jesus called this woman to a very short journey that, in her bent-over state, was probably difficult and possibly embarrassing. Was this rabbi going to use her as an example to illustrate some sort of point about people getting what they deserve? Just how had she gotten that evil spirit eighteen years ago anyway? No! The rabbi from Nazareth traveled with healing in his wings (see Malachi 4:2). And so, at the end of her short journey to the center of the synagogue, she began another journey of glorifying God with a healed body.

The Gospels are full of stories of Jesus’ going to people: the Syro-Canaanite woman (see Matthew 15:21-28; Mark 7:24-30), the Samaritan woman at the well (see John 4:1-42), and Jairus’s daughter (see Luke 8:40-56). And yet, Jesus called this woman, possessed for almost two decades, to come to the center of the crowd so that Jesus could straighten her out. I wonder if Jesus is calling any of us on short journeys of faith so that we can experience the healing we need.