Article January 17, 2022 Issue

We can be brothers, sisters, burden-lifters

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, like Jesus, we could free our brothers and sisters from the burdens they bear?

Brian Webster

Who hasn’t faced a day when a sense of burden was so daunting that we wished the day could be over before it began? The pressure and stress of family, business, personal challenges, pain, or sorrow can seem unrelenting and make us feel helpless. 

There was a woman in the Bible who likely woke to such a feeling every day (see Luke 13:10–13). We read that she “had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself.” The description of her ailment as a “spirit of infirmity” suggests there was something in thought that was manifesting itself in her body and experience. Was it worldly cares that burdened her so heavily that she could not stand upright? A personal tragedy? A lack of love? 

We’ll never know, but we do know that upon seeing her, Jesus “called her to him” and then spoke to her with the authority of God’s perfect love: “Thou art loosed from thine infirmity.” The account then says that “he laid his hands on her: and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God.”

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