Tuesday | Week 4

Imagine the scene.

A pool near the Sheep Gate, one of the busier gates into Jerusalem, where sacrificial animals are brought to the market to be bought and sold. It’s a bustling place — noisy and boisterous, with the din of people and animals going into and out of the city. And around the pool lie perhaps dozens of people with all sorts of physical handicaps — some blind, some lame, some unable to move at all without help. All hoping to be the first into the water when it ripples, believing that God will heal them if they are first.

Whether God does sometimes heal in this way—after all, he healed one man when he bathed in the River Jordan, and others when Peter’s shadow fell on them—is not the point of the story. The point is that there is among the throng a man who has been incapacitated for  thirty-eight years, and yet he keeps coming back, hoping to be healed.

It is here that I can put myself into the scene.

Perhaps I have hope; but mostly I feel crushed by hopelessness. I am not the favored one; these others, who unlike me can move, will reach the water before me.

And in the midst of my resignation a stranger appears, and his attention is for some reason drawn to me among all the others. And his question, “Do you want to be healed?”, stuns me.

Why does this man think I’m here? Of course, I want to be healed! But my answer betrays the skepticism I feel. “That I want to be healed should be obvious, sir, but as you can see, I can’t get into the water in time without help.” Perhaps he’ll stay with me, waiting until the water moves again, and then lift me into the water?

But instead, he makes an impossible demand. “Get up and walk!”

Jesus’ question, “Do you want to be healed?” is everything. Did the man really want to be healed? Or was it easier to continue as he had for so many years? 

And could changing it all be as simple as doing what Jesus said?

Jesus has asked me the same question — and still does. “Do you really want to be different than you are today? Do you want to be what I created you to be? Do you want to be healed?”

“Get up and walk!”