This question that Jesus posed to a man disabled for thirty-eight years, is as profound as it sounds naïve. “Do you want to be healed?”
Jesus went to a place called the pool of Bethesda. It was a place for people who needed healing from some illness or disability. To this place Jesus went, and it is recorded that He went straight to a man who had been in the place for thirty-eight years, apparently seeking to be healed.
The subject of our story was paralysed, mobility-challenged, and had been there for thirty-eight years, always on the lookout for healing but never attaining it. It would seem that a man paralysed, and needing help with mobility, was at this place where healing was sought was anxious, desirous, and hopeful that he would one day be able to get the healing he apparently craved.
The man’s situation was tragic, and it is no idle surmise that Jesus knew the man’s plight and its cause. Why then would He who had the power to give to this man what had eluded him so long, ask him if he wanted to be healed?
What would your answer be if He asked you the same question regarding that issue you have battled for so long, apparently seeking a solution?
There are many situations in life that call for help, some more dire than others; very often we find ourselves in straits that require help, deliverance, succour.
In such circumstances, we hold ourselves as people ready to receive needed help to come out of them. Yet often we remain in the situation, not because there is no help available, but because we simply do not allow ourselves to receive the help we say we need.
Have you wondered why the man at the pool could not get into the water for thirty-eight years… longer than many of us have lived?
Was it perhaps because there was something in that place he had accepted as his normal, and was unwilling to let go of?
Having been there for that long, had he gained rights in the place, including respect and consideration he might otherwise not have received in his own home?
How did he get his meals? It would be difficult to expect that members of his family would send him food everyday for that long; so how did he satisfy his physical hunger pangs? Was it perhaps that newer people with ailments who came with food willingly shared their food and thus he had no need to work for it?
We will never know why Jesus found it needful to ask this apparently frustrated and desperate man if he really wanted a change in his circumstances.
May I ask you if you really want a change in the circumstances you cry about everyday, or are you perhaps moaning about it although in your heart you have accepted it, and almost fear to lose the security that situation has provided?
If we want to receive the solution we profess to want, it is time to be reflect and to self-assess and to dare to answer why we remain in situations we groan about but do not seem eager to let go of.
