“Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of ‘the brightest and the best’ among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these ‘nobodies’ to expose the hollow pretensions of the ‘somebodies’? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, ‘If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God’” (1 Cor 1:26-31, The Message).

Jesus turns everything on its head. Look at the Beatitudes (Matt 5:3-12). While the world honors the rich, the famous, and those who appear to have it all together, Jesus blessed the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, and other overlooked people. He cared about children, healed those with leprosy, elevated the status of women. Those who caught his attention were the ones who didn’t stand a chance in the world.

Overlooked by the world

One such woman is summed up in just two verses of Scripture, Luke 13:11-13. All we know about her is that for 18 years she had been bent over from a crippling disease, unable to stand upright. Had she, like the woman with the issue of blood, spent “all she had on doctors yet, instead of getting better she grew worse”? (Mark 5:26).

Who would have paid the slightest attention to this woman? In the eyes of the world she was worth nothing. She was just the kind of person Jesus notices. He was in one of the synagogues on a Sabbath when he saw her and called her over. “‘Woman, you are set free from your infirmities.’ Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God” (13:12-13).

Seen by Jesus

Perhaps she had come often to this same synagogue to beg  the rabbi to pray for her healing. But it was not the rabbi’s prayers that healed her, nor even her own.  She was healed because of the compassion of the Lord.

In response she blew a trumpet for God! What praise and worship must have flown from her lips? Perhaps she sang out Psalm 103:

“Praise the Lord, my soul;
    all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
Praise the Lord, my soul,
    and forget not all his benefits…”

Her story, our story

Is this nameless woman’s story your own? Was Jesus FOR you when all the world was AGAINST you? Or are you waiting for him to come to your rescue?

Perhaps this is the story of someone you know and love, or the story that weighs heavily on you as you watch the news.You cry out for God’s intervention for people in their deep pain. Those despised and bypassed by the world are of utmost concern to Jesus.

Let this woman’s story draw you to the Savior’s heart today. Cry out to him for your own needs and the needs of others. He is looking for the marginalized, the broken—the nobodies of this world—that he may give them a fresh start.

Then pick up your trumpet and blow it for God!

If you want to see the version of 1 Cor 1:26-31 that actually uses the words, “But God” you’ll find it here, in the NIV.