I work downtown one day a week. Walking from the parking lot to the office, I see a lot of people who are bent over. It is not simply the homeless man with all his earthly possessions slung in a bag over his shoulder. It is also the business executive in her stylish suit and spike-heeled shoes, and the sleepy teenager with his backpack. They are all hunched over.

I wonder what it is about our lives that makes so many of us hunched over? Obviously, we all need to work on our posture. But I suspect it is more than that. We carry the burdens of busy lives, of worries, of things we have done and left undone.

In The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan writes of the protagonist Christian carrying a heavy burden through his journeys and finally laying it down at the foot of the cross. I suspect that many of the burdens we carry—like Christian’s—relate to our sin, our “separation from God.” Certainly many of our burdens come from our failure to trust in God’s presence and sustenance.

In today’s gospel story, Jesus heals a woman who was physically crippled. Can we trust that Jesus will help us stand up straight too?