Recently, I’ve been getting these little 3 to 5 minute podcast meditations from Emily Freeman (from Chatting at the Sky). Basically, she reads a scripture and talks about it, all with this lovely piano music playing in the background. She did seven of them, and they were just what I needed in my past very hectic week.
One of the passages she shared was in John 5:1-9. It’s the story of the man by the pool of Bethesda who was sick (although I’ve often heard him described as lame, no verse really says that specifically but since Jesus tells him to pick up his bed and walk, mobility was kind of an issue for him, whatever the actual problem he had).
The verses tell us that an angel of the Lord would stir the water, and the first person in the water would be healed. Obviously, this was a big hangout for those who had various types of physical problems. In verse 3, it says, “In these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered, waiting for the moving of the waters.”
Our of all this multitude, there was a man who had been waiting for his turn in the waters for a long time. In fact, it says that he had been waiting 38 YEARS. I’m 43 years old, and I can’t imagine waiting for anything from kindergarten until now.
But this man had been lying by the side of that pool for almost four decades. During that time, he had probably seen the angel stir the water countless times, and every single time, someone else got in that water before he did and they were healed. The problem wasn’t that the miracle didn’t happen. The problem was that the miracle was happening for everyone BUT him. It was never his turn, and after 38 years, you have to wonder if he had started to doubt that it ever would be.
Yet, he kept showing up every day because it was the only hope he had, slim as it was.
Jesus approaches him BECAUSE Jesus knew the man had been in his current condition for a long time. And then he asks a funny question. He asks the man, “Do you wish to get well?”
Thirty-eight years to the same place in the hopes he – the guy who was lame and had nobody to help him – could beat the hordes to the miracle and Jesus was asking if he wanted to get well?
I don’t know if the man had heard of this Jesus of Nazareth, but regardless, he answered politely (which quite honestly might have been more than I would have done under the circumstances. At the very least, I would have probably started laughing hysterically).
The man tells Jesus, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down before me.”
You’ll notice the man didn’t really answer Jesus’ question. Instead, he seems to be trying to explain his failure to get well all those years, like he thought maybe Jesus didn’t think he tried hard enough to participate in his own miracle.
Then Jesus simply says, “Get up, pick up your pallet and walk.”
Eight simple words, and it says the man became well, picked up his pallet (or bed) and started walking.
All those years,
All that waiting,
All that trying,
All that disappointment every time he failed to make it in first.
And Jesus gives the man his miracle without any effort on the man’s part at all.
I wonder what you’ve been waiting on, praying about, trying to fix or solve. It doesn’t have to be a physical ailment. It can be an emotional wound, a deep disappointment, something you keep failing at.
You keep showing up. Like the man by the pool, you get points for tenacity and perseverance, and I don’t want to undervalue that. After all, if the man hadn’t been at the pool, he would have not encountered Jesus.
When Jesus whispers, Do you want to get well? maybe you have to force down the hysterical laughter or prevent the angry words from spilling from your lips. Instead, you point to all the ways you have tried and failed, all the ways you aren’t up to the task of getting the miracle you’ve desperately been waiting for.
The thing was, the man at the pool of Bethesda didn’t need a miracle. He needed Jesus.
And I’m wondering if maybe, just maybe, what you need isn’t another solution or another idea or another thing to try. I’m wondering if what you really need is Jesus, too.
So, do you want to get well?
Blessings, Rosanne