The Barefoot Evangelist

Read Luke 13:10-17 with your family.

Less than one hundred years ago, people were still treating Sunday as a day when nothing except attending church and reading the Bible was supposed to happen. Children were expected to be quiet and not play outside. There was no shopping of any kind. People did not run errands. This was how Christians followed the commandment “Honour the Sabbath and keep it Holy”.

We have changed a lot in the past one hundred years, and now people who go to church are also doing a lot of other things on a Sunday.

Jesus would have understood that. Jesus was a practical person.

In this story the leaders from the Synagogue were angry with Jesus because he worked on the Sabbath, he healed a woman who had a problem with her back. Those leaders were forgetting that the Sabbath was meant for the people to have one day of relaxation, it was not meant to be a punishment.

Jesus got angry at those leaders and reminded them of God’s teachings. He reminded them that kindness on the Sabbath for people, animals and nature was a good thing.