This book contains an ole story re-told and explained.
“Now there
is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool . . . There 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 your mat and walk.’
At once the man was cured he picked up his mat and walked” (John 5:2-9).
Even when we are paralyzed, Jesus asks, “Do You
Want to Get well?” In our frustration we
might explain how we have longed for healing and health but have been incapable
of obtaining it. We might express our
pain that no one cared enough to help us get what we needed.
Yet two things
become clear: What we have been trying to access for our cure may not be what
we really need and Jesus won’t fix what we want to keep broken.
Paralysis in
our churches has resulted in atrophy. We
have too often been looking in all the wrong places for our healing and
restoration. It’s Jesus who gets us up on our feet and commands us to walk. But
first we have to answer his question.
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