D.L.

FIRST FRIDAY 23rd OF LENT

“Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”
“Sir,” the invalid 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.”
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.
The day on which this took place was a Sabbath,”
(John 5,1-9 NIV11-GKE)

Did you notice that this man did not ask Jesus to be healed?

This is when Jesus appears. He does three things.
The first one is that when he gets near the pool and sees everyone there, he goes to the one he sees lying on the mat. Second, he gets to know his condition, and third, he asks a crucial question: Do you want to be made well? In other words, Jesus sees our conditions, understands our plight, and asks if we want to heal. He speaks into our purposes, destiny and direction. He sees, understands, and sets us right for the direction we should walk. The very path that has been planned out for us to walk on.
Most crucially, if we allow Him to do this for us, we may experience and encounter the giver of life. He said that he is the very life that gives life to all men. He also said that he is the light of this world. Third. Another aspect of this account that can bring hope is that Jesus spoke.

You may think that this is trivial, but it is not. Another interpretation is similar to this one when another paralysed man was at the temple’s doors, and Peter and John helped him up when he was healed. (See Acts 3) They are valid accounts, but Jesus commanded his body to rise up, take your mat, and walk in this encounter. Jesus spoke, and the man walked.
We must embody the miracles around us and allow them to fuel our hope for what may be if we remain diligent in our work. So let’s hold the miracles around us, but not just hold them as a kind of centrepiece upon which we gaze but as a reminder and challenge to make these miracles less miraculous—to make them the norm for us all.¹

1. Bruce Reyes-Chow, 40 Days, 40 Prayers, 40 Words, Accordance electronic ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015), 25. ↩︎