Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool…
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 […] 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 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.-John 5:2-9
Too often I wait for someone else to make me better.
I wait for someone to serve first; I expect people to open up to me before I show them myself. But this anecdote into the truth about Christ is that He is here for us not to be our feet, but the strength that allows us to walk.
It’s funny to me how clever the Bible is. Not in a tricky way, but in an allegorical one. This story broken down is how I am whenever my heart has fallen into feelings of hopelessness. It starts when the guy has just given up. Sitting there; waiting for nothing. Sometimes thirty-eight years. There’s nothing but loneliness and hopelessness. Then hope arrives with a choice. “Do you want to get well?” It sounds like a pretty bulletproof choice; but the immediate response is an excuse. “I have no one to help me into the pool…” It takes Christ exclaiming it for the man to begin taking action. (My personal favorite about this story is that it all took place next to the “Sheep Gate,” where people used to lie.)
It’s a living word because it’s always at work.
I am this man on the mat at times. Paralyzed by circumstance. Waiting for someone else to fix it. Sometimes in the dark that I even am this way, until something like truth shows up and offers me another choice. Even little things like getting up in the morning, and not lying around for 40 minutes letting my thoughts take me wherever they feel like going.
The first step is the hardest in both faith and waking up.
I choose to always be a man who takes the path of hope. Waking up. Walking. Even when hope may seem as just another passing voice, because my circumstances have blinded me—still I choose hope.
Walking and healing start with the simple question, “Do you want to get well?”
-Jason O’Toole
(Source: memoir.jasontoole.com)
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