Readers’ Choice is here: Over two-thirds of our devotionals get emailed responses from readers like you. Hearing that what we have written is meaningful to you is meaningful to us. That’s why we love sharing some of your comments and messages. Thank you, readers. We do what we do to serve you. There’s still time to tell us about your favorite, most meaningful posts of the year. If you shared it with someone, or it helped you, let us know via email, direct message, or by filling out the linked form.
Links for today’s readings:
Oct 9 Read: 1 Kings 12 Listen: (5:15) Read: Psalms 32 Listen: (1:34)
Readers’ Choice posts are selected by our readers:
Barbara, TN — So good and true!
Brian, DC — I agree with you. Diseases should ignite our sympathy, not our stigma. And we should learn to see all of our neighbors through the eyes of God. It is a horrible thing to go through life being taunted and cast out because of something that person had no control over…If only we could see God’s glory in those whom the world refuses to look at let alone talk with and listen to.
This post was originally published on April 9, 2025, based on readings from Leviticus 13:2.
Scripture Focus: Leviticus 13:2
2 “When anyone has a swelling or a rash or a shiny spot on their skin that may be a defiling skin disease, they must be brought to Aaron the priest or to one of his sons who is a priest.
Reflection: The Stigma of Disease — Readers’ Choice
By Erin Newton
When my son came home from the hospital, he had a glaring, visible physical disability. There would be no hiding this. We were prepared to have a child with disabilities, but after months of medical treatment, we realized his disease would be a billboard.
Stigma comes with diseases and disabilities. People form conclusions and assumptions without information. My love for our son was no less the day he received his tracheostomy, but I knew the stares and whispers would come the moment we stepped out of the building. I imagined them saying, Who sinned, this boy or his parents? (John 9.1-3)
Leviticus 13, unfortunately, has been misunderstood as support for associating disease with moral failure. A series of scale diseases are listed: things that cause discoloration, shiny marks, boils, burns, even baldness. Long ago, these descriptions were misidentified with leprosy, or Hansen’s disease. Combined with stories of scale diseases inflicted on a person for sin, such as Miriam in response to her criticism against Moses (Numbers 12), modern readers began to assume that God judged all those suffering from Hansen’s disease.
Diseases affecting the skin are not the only ones to carry such stigma. Amy Kenny (My Body Is Not a Prayer Request) details how people in the church have approached her with remedies or assessments of her faith just because of her disability.
How do we read Leviticus 13?
The visual aspect of scale diseases resembled skin peeling away. It was a reflection of death; it reminded them of decay. Death has no place in the presence of God. It was not a moral judgment on the person with boils but a recognition that death deteriorates the body. God bestows life and order; death brings decay and disorder.
More than anything, we must read these chapters with eyes heavenward. We are not being given a rulebook on how to judge others based on disease or disability. This chapter points up to God by pointing down toward death.
Diseases should ignite our sympathy, not our stigma.
And what of those that have no “scales” to the naked eye? What reaction will I get when I tell you of my anxiety or my OCD?
Learning to see the world through the eyes of God means being quick with sympathy and slow with accusations. It means knowing the real enemy is the disorder brought on by death and not pinpointing supposed faults.
The Lord’s Prayer:
We will take a break from The Divine Hours prayers for the month of October and instead pray Dallas Willard’s paraphrase of The Lord’s Prayer:
Dear Father, always near us, may your name be treasured and loved, may your rule be completed in us—may your will be done here on earth in just the way it is done in heaven.
Give us today the things we need today, and forgive us our sins and impositions on you as we are forgiving all who in any way offend us.
Please don’t put us through trials, but deliver us from everything bad. Because you are the one in charge, and you have all the power, and the glory too is all yours-forever-which is just the way we want it!
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Read more: Spiritual Twins
Each twin is a perfect donor match to the other. They can heal one another if needed. A better “eye for an eye.”