On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God.
Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue leader said to the people, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.”
The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?”
When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing. - Luke 13:10-17
When God does something wonderful for someone, suddenly the spotlight is no longer on me and I sometimes feel jealous. I mean God has done wonderful things in my life and what happened to this someone is no more incredible than what happened to me. So I nitpick and find something that they aren't doing just right so that their "wonderful" moment wasn't quite as wonderful. By knocking them down, I am putting the spotlight back on myself. And that is sin.
The most incredible day in the life of this woman was the day when she met Jesus. He struck down the spirit that was crippling her, letting her experience--for the first time in "eighteen long years"--walking upright and probably without pain. But when Jesus did that, the spotlight was taken from the "synagogue leader" who probably felt himself the most upright in the whole town. So that leader looked for something that would make the woman look less impressive. "Oh, healed. Well, she was healed on the Sabbath and all good Jews know that God himself rested on the Sabbath and therefore no miracles from God occurred on the Sabbath." Bam! Put that woman--and Jesus--in their place. But Jesus revealed his comments for what they were--a thin veneer of righteous over a heart full of selfishness.
I am guilty like this. Minimizing the work of God (and the credit he should rightfully get from it) by trying to make it smaller than it was (it was a miracle) by nitpicking all the flaws so that it appears less miraculous. But the lie is not in the miracle, it is in the nitpicking. "Oh yeah, but you didn't do X or Y or Z. How could you do that?" Instead of giving God full credit and letting him deal with the question of details. I'm probably the guy in the New Jerusalem complaining about the environmental impact reports that weren't filed before it was installed on planet Earth. But God is great. And God does good work. And any attempt by me to distract from that is wrong.
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