My lesson from the Miracle at the Pool

 

Many yesterday’s ago, they gathered at the Pool of Bethesda, on the porch, the covered area near the temple in Jerusalem where many of the sick and infirm of the area gathered, hoping to be healed - wanting to be healed. Maybe even afraid to be healed. 

A few days ago, my husband and I were in the emergency room waiting to hear what the pain and fear of this current virus would mean in my own body.  I thought then that this was our own porch.  

So many people waiting!  So many hurts!  So many stories!  And we could do nothing for them.  (That was how we felt) but it was not true. 

WE COULD SEE THEM!

That sounds strange, I guess, but when I read the scripture about the temple porch I see these words, “One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.  When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be healed?’” (John 5:5)

JESUS SAW A MAN

Jesus saw a man, it wasn’t only that Jesus saw sickness – He saw the person, the man, and Jesus knew all about him.  Isn’t it amazing that the God of the universe knew and looked at this man? 

We can do something for all of the hurting, and it’s a hard thing to do - to really do.  

We can SEE them as people, as loved and wanted children of our good, just, and our all-knowing God.

The Pool of Bethesda that we read about in the scripture was “in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate”. John 5:2 tells us that the pool was “surrounded by five covered colonnades". During Jesus’ time, the Pool of Bethesda lay outside the city walls. It was at this pool that Jesus performed this miracle.

The name of the pool, “Bethesda,” is Aramaic. It means “House of Mercy.” John tells us that “a great number of disabled people used to lie there —the blind, the lame, the paralyzed”.  The covered colonnades would have provided shade for those who gathered there, but there was another reason for the popularity of the Pool of Bethesda. It was believed that an angel came and stirred the water, and the first person to get in the pool would be healed.  There is speculation as to whether that reference is in our Bible as an explanation of why the people were there, or whether it was something that really happened.  Either way it was hope in a person’s own ability to solve every problem in life, to get into the water first.  That was impossible hope in something other than God, and it is not the ultimate hope.

However, on the day that Jesus visited the Pool of Bethesda, there was a man. (John 5:5) Jesus SAW him and asked the man if he wanted to be healed. The man replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me” (verse 7). The man said that he hadn’t been healed because he was not able to get to the water ahead of the others.

Jesus swept aside the excuse with one command: “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk”. The man was instantly cured, and “he picked up his mat and walked.” (verse 9) The man needed Jesus to be there right then – maybe sometime in the past or the future as well, but – right then.  That’s interesting, isn’t it?  Thirty-eight years and Jesus knew the man was ready to do what Jesus told him to do. 

If we could really see people, and if we could know their hurts, we would help them by taking them in our prayers to the living water, to Jesus.  Oh, I know, we can’t solve each of their problems, sickness, pain, and trials, in fact we most likely cannot solve any of them.  My question is sometimes, will He?  Will God solve them?  All I do know is that He is here, He sees them, He cares, and He will do what is needed and right.

Amazingly, not everyone was happy about the man’s miraculous healing. It wasn’t in the realm of the way they looked at the rule book, at the way things “should” be.   I believe we do the same thing when we expect God to always act in a way that we humans understand.

The day Jesus healed the man at the poolside happened to be a Sabbath. As the man left Bethesda, the religious leaders saw him carrying his mat, and they stopped him: “It is the Sabbath,” they said. “The law forbids you to carry your mat.” (John 5:10) The reaction of those leaders shows that, no matter how much proof God provides, there will be some people who refuse to see the truth. The religious leaders couldn’t see the miracle. All they could see was that someone had violated a rule that they believed would protect them from sinning.

There is an idea that Jesus may have done more than heal just this one man on that day, though the account does say that Jesus slipped away after healing this man.  You would think that, if He had healed more, we might hear more about that, but why, if it was just that one, why just the one man?  Why one healing when so many were hurting? 

I was thinking about a parent who knows that there is one child in his or her family that truly needs extra attention (maybe help, or correction, or forgiveness) in some area.  We are NOT perfect parents, but God is.  And God, that parent, will do what is necessary for that one – He won’t paint with a ‘broad brush.”  He cares about each ONE.

God doesn’t have a limited amount of care, and He does have an unlimited amount of knowledge about our needs, personalities, courage, possibilities and frailties, and an unlimited amount of love for His children.  Unlimited love and unlimited power do not always equate in our minds.  And “love” in our minds isn’t always demonstrated in the way it is in His.  God does nothing haphazardly. I believe that the Bible shows “God has purpose.”   

From my own selfish standpoint, I truly want to be special to God in that way.  Special, in that He knows me as His own.  He knows me,  not a “class” or a “type” or a “part of a group”?  Maybe that is selfish, but maybe it’s just being a child of a good, good Father, even when I don’t understand it. 

It isn’t that God doesn’t put each of His children in that role of “special child.”  I believe It just means that He knows each ONE of us – alone - and each ONE is a “special child” to Him.

As to the why?  Why not fix them all, heal them all?  I’m not sure there is an answer that we would understand from this point of eternity.  But I do know that there is an answer. 

Is God more interested in His will for our eternal life than the present pain and suffering?  How do we say “more” interested when we don’t even know Him?  The Bible tells us that He made us, He has always known us, and He loves us.   He is interested in every aspect of our lives, and He would do anything to bring us through the valley.  Psalm 23 tells us, “Though I walk THROUGH the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil..." Even when we do not understand, we must know that God is walking through this life with us.  God is for us, not against us.  Each individual one of us.

Just a thought - When the Bible refers to the “Church” the word is translated from the “Ecclesia, Greek Ekklēsia, (“gathering of those summoned) or the “called out ones.” There was not a summon for a particular type of people, there was a summons for ones!  The reason that’s important to me is that we cannot expect to understand the needs and hearts and minds and responsibilities of each individual person as God does. 

So, I need to look at each one.  I need to see each individual, as made in the IMAGE of God.  As made by God and loved by Him. 

I pray that as I look at the people, the hurting people on my porch,  I will truly SEE them.