You no
doubt already know that our actions and our words can make an enormous
difference in someone else’s life. Every day, each one of us has the
opportunity to be a messenger of God’s hope and love — and to be a healing
presence — sometimes in unexpected ways.
With that
in mind, consider today’s text. In it, the Gospel writer Luke offers us a
short, action-packed story with interesting characters. Each of the people we
meet demonstrates faith and compassion and reminds us of the impact that our
lives can have on one another.
Let’s spend
some time meeting the characters of the story. As you hear about them, consider
which one you relate to. Or perhaps think of someone you have met who reminds you
of a person described in this account.
The slave
The story
begins with the plight of a slave. We don’t have any information about this
slave — we don’t even know if this was a man or a woman or what kind of illness
had brought this servant to the brink of death. It is significant that we never
hear the slave utter a word. This reflects the uncomfortable reality of the
slavery that was part of biblical times.
As far as
we can tell from the Bible, slavery as practiced by the Jews was not quite the
grim institution it was in America prior to the Civil War. Because of Israel’s
own enslavement in Egypt, the treatment of slaves by Israelite owners was generally
less savage than it might have been. The slave owner in this story, however,
was not Jewish. As an officer in the Roman occupyin
