There was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem at the Sheep Gate a pool called in Hebrew Bethesda, with five porticoes. In these lay a large number of ill, blind, lame, and crippled. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been ill for a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be well?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; while I am on my way, someone else gets down there before me.” Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your mat, and walk.” Immediately the man became well, took up his mat, and walked.
Reading this passage, of course we focus on Jesus healing the sick man. Thirty-eight years the man had been ill. Thirty-eight years. That’s plenty of time to become hopeless and demoralized. But Jesus loved and pitied the man and immediately healed him, and so we learn that God helps the hopeless. But what about those left behind? the “large number of ill, blind, lame, and crippled”? How many times have we felt hopeless and demoralized, and NOT received immediate healing? How many times have we needed comfort, hope, an answer, a miracle…and God felt so far away? But He has assured us that he is always near and will always provide. “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father takes care of them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” (Matthew 6:26). Still, when we seek help we must be prepared to accept God’s help in His way, on His timeline. Jon Acuff writes on StuffChristiansLike: “I kept qualifying my cry of ‘help me.’ What I was actually saying was, ‘help me in one of the following ways that I’m used to and have tried before and understand and approve of.’” But that’s not how God works, and approaching our problems in that manner will only frustrate us more. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9) The good news? God doesn’t just offer solutions; he offers a savior.
Challenge:
Think of a struggle in your life right now in which you need God’s help. Invite Christ into that problem. Thank God for the times in your life when he has delivered you from suffering, and trust that He can, and will, do it again—as He sees fit. Be still in His presence, and trusting, wait for His reply. “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.” (Isaiah 26: 3-4)
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