Gaze upon the birds in the sky. They do not sow or reap or store in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of far greater value than they?
The tax collector, however, stood some distance away and would not even raise his eyes to heaven. Rather, he kept beating his breast as he said, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner.’
The Lord said to Moses, “Climb up to me on the mountain and remain there. I will give you stone tablets with the laws and commandments that I have written for their instruction.”
The Lord is slow to anger but great in power, and he will never allow the guilty to escape punishment. He makes his way in whirlwind and storm, and the clouds are the dust beneath his feet.
He said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not realize that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not into the heart but into the stomach and is discharged into the sewer?” Thus, he pronounced all foods clean.
While he was departing as they gazed upward toward the sky, suddenly two men dressed in white robes stood beside them, and they said, “Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking up into the sky? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will come back in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.”
On one Sabbath as Jesus was teaching in the synagogue, a woman was present, possessed by a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and completely unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said, “Woman, you are freed from your infirmity.” Then he laid his hands on her, and immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.
But the leader of the synagogue was indignant because Jesus had effected a cure on the Sabbath, and he said to the assembled people, “There are six days when work is permitted. Come on those days and be cured, and not on the Sabbath.” The Lord said to him in reply, “You hypocrites! Is there a single one of you who does not untie his ox or his donkey and lead it from its stall to give it water on the Sabbath? Should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has held bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath?” At these words, all his adversaries were put to shame, and the people rejoiced at all the wonderful things he was doing.