Another Crooked Year
By Steve Bietz
Burke County
“There was a crooked man, and he went a crooked mile, He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile; He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse, And they all lived together in a little crooked house.”
Historians are not exactly sure just who should get credit for the poem. Originally, it was a political satire condemning the alliance between Scotland and England in the 1600s. A pun, if you will, toward crooked politicians from both countries trying to get along despite their animosity towards one another. We can hardly deny that our world today has really gotten “crooked.” Not just politicians, but from top to bottom. Everywhere we look, things are out of whack.
The author of the gospel that bears his name, Luke, tells of an incident about someone who was crooked. Crooked in the sense that she could not stand up straight. Of the 4 gospel writers, only Luke tells about a woman that could not straighten up. It happened one Sabbath as Jesus was supplying the message for the day of worship. “And behold, there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bent over and could in no way raise herself up.” (Luke 13:11)
According to my mother, I was always standing crooked when I was a boy. She was always telling me to “stand up straight” or “straighten up” but here is a woman that went way beyond a slouching ten-year-old. We cannot be sure what her issue was but from the original Greek language, we see that she was “bent double.” For eighteen years this woman had some chronic curvature of the spine, some spinal deformity that crippled her to the point that Luke, a physician himself, gave us a snapshot of a disease that had horribly interfered with the woman’s joint and body movement. She was crooked!
I like that the woman, despite her crippleness, still came to church. Which is where she comes in contact with Jesus. “But when Jesus saw her, He called her to Him and said to her, Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity. And He laid hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God.” (Luke 13:12,13)
Although we may not be able to ascertain the exact malady that this woman had which had made her crooked, Jesus does tell us who caused it. “So ought this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound, think of it, for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath?” (Luke 13:16) Jesus blames Satan the Devil. By extension, Jesus tells us that Satan causes pandemics, Satan causes cancer, Satan causes heartaches, Satan causes pain, Satan causes death.
We live on a crooked planet that desperately needs to be put straight. And so it is that we have experienced 2021, another crooked year on a crooked planet. Praise God that there is a pre-planned answer that the Godhead put in place before the foundation of the world; an answer for mankind so that he can be loosed from Satan’s clutches and we can escape our crooked lives.
In Isaiah chapter 40, we see that there is an individual who will come and “the crooked places shall be made straight.” (Isaiah 40:4) That person is Jesus Christ! We have just finished celebrating the first advent of Jesus when He was born. But a day is soon to come when Our Lord and Savior will return and He will make all the crookedness that we are…straight. I cannot tell you if that will be in 2022, or 2023, or another year. But we do know that the only answer for our crooked years on this crooked sinful planet, is the second coming of Jesus. May it be our prayer that in 2022, we draw ever closer to our Lord as we wait for Him to return when He will make everything straight.
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Steve Bietz is the pastor at Morganton Seventh Day Adventist Church. You can read more good Christian news from Pastor Steve Bietz HERE.
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Blue Ridge Christian News covers Burke County, McDowell County, Mitchell County, Yancey County, Madison County, in North Carolina, and Christian news from around the country.
