Wednesday January 10, 2018
Mothers-in-law get a very bad press in world literature. “Give up all hope of peace so long as your mother-in-law is alive,” wrote Juvenal, around the end of the first century. It makes you curious to know what a first-century Roman mother-in-law was like! One hopes they hadn’t quite forgotten that they all were once daughters-in-law! There is another first-century mother-in-law we know a little about: this Palestinian one, in the far-flung colony of the Roman empire, Peter’s wife’s mother. We know about her that she once had a fever! It is little enough, for it must be true of everyone that ever lived! But we also know that Jesus healed her. And we know that the moment she was healed she began to serve them. This has its own significance: those who are healed by Christ begin straight away, as by some deep instinct, to serve the community.
