Life Spark: Christ’s offer of new life applies to you. (John 5:1-15)
Several years ago I loaned the majority of our retirement money to a friend – a successful businessman who developed property. When the ‘great recession’ hit, I lost my unsecured capital, all of it. It was a dark night of the soul for me. I felt like a loser, a fool, an emotional invalid. Fortunately, Jesus loves and helps invalids.
When Jesus went back to Jerusalem during one of the annual Jewish feasts, he went to a place where no healthy person would want to go: the pool of Bethesda. The pool was a gathering place for people with serious handicaps. Blind people tapped their way to the pool with their canes. Crippled people came with crutches. Paralyzed people were carried by friends and left by the pool. “One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.” (John 5:5, NIV)This guy had been a ‘partly dead’ man for most of his life.
Jesus asked him a strange question: “Do you want to get well?” (John 5:6, NIV) Jesus knows that setbacks can become excuses for not getting better and handicaps can become crutches that we’re afraid to live without. More than a few times the Lord has asked me, “Do you really want to become more alive in this area of your life? Are you ready for new responsibility?”
The man by the pool informed Jesus that more life was impossible for him. When the Lord offers more health, more aliveness, for your body, your soul, your family, your mind, do you respond, “Well, that might work for someone else, but not for me.”
“Then Jesus said to him, ‘Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.’ At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.” (John 5:8-9, NIV)
When the Word of God talks to us about becoming more and more alive, we have to decide if we will believe that and walk in it or if we will quietly disqualify ourselves from it or blame other people for why we can’t have it.
This story helps me realize that Jesus, Life, moves toward broken places in me. When Jesus went to Jerusalem, His compassion caused Him to be drawn toward the wrong side of the tracks, the pool of Bethesda, the melting pot for damaged people. And although, like this invalid, I may tend to disqualify myself for healing, the Lord doesn’t disqualify me. He is so kind!
Life-challenge: Where is one place in your life where you’ve doubted that God could or would heal you? How, specifically, might you ‘pick up your mat and walk?’