Reading the newspaper can be very informative, but for some it can be very discouraging. Every day you can read about people who have unbelievable trouble to the point where they feel completely helpless. Sometimes that feeling leads to even more tragedy because they can find no other way out. Newspapers tell us stories of both heroism and tragedy, but helplessness is a tragedy in itself. Here’s why.
There is a story in the first fifteen verses of John chapter 5 that sets up Jesus for a confrontation with the Jewish rulers through a personal encounter with one man. He has returned to Jerusalem once again and encounters a man at the side of the pool of Bethesda who had been ill for thirty-eight years. He was waiting for the opportunity to be the first to get into the water when the water was stirred up since apparently at such times a person must enter the water quickly in order to be healed.
You can imagine if he has been waiting for that long how helpless he must feel when every time the waters are stirred, others get into the water ahead of him and he misses the opportunity once again. What a picture of helplessness.
The feeling of helplessness can be one of the most debilitating of all human experiences. It can cause profound depression. It can make one feel as if there is simply no answer to life’s problems. Certainly the man in this story, after thirty-eight years must have felt that way. We can only wonder at how he could have lasted that long without any hope of help.
Then Jesus came. As He approached the man, He asked him a strange question. “Do you wish to get well?” If, as the text says, Jesus knew all about him wouldn’t you think the question was a bit redundant? Perhaps the answer contains a lesson for us. When feelings of helplessness come over us, there is something we can do that is more effective than anything else. That is what Jesus had the man do. We can try all kinds of things to try to cover up, avoid, feel better about, or seek some magic solution to the problem. But what Jesus pointed out to the man was that he need only ask because the answer to this man’s problem was standing right in front of him. How often do we tend to make our first choice anything or anyone but the One who has the answer best suited to our eternal welfare.
Jesus simply told the man to pick up his pallet and walk, which he immediately did.
Now the trouble starts. The Jews, probably the Pharisees and temple leaders, came across this man walking down the street carrying his pallet. It was the Sabbath and in their minds this was work and therefore forbidden on that day. When the Jewish leaders asked him why he was doing this illegal activity the man who was healed told them that the man who had healed him also told him to take his pallet and walk. On asking him who told him, he said he did not know. Clearly, what was important to him was that he had been healed. Who did it and whether his instructions were legal was irrelevant. Jesus meanwhile had just slipped away.
In our response to the trouble that comes our way, sometimes we just forget what is really important. To the Jews in this story, keeping the law was important above all. To the man healed, being whole again was important. But to Jesus, what was important was the eternal welfare of the man. His illness and subsequent healing was only used by God to bring him to a relationship with God that he apparently did not have before. There is no more detail told in the story, only that Jesus told him to sin no more. We really can’t draw any more conclusions about that without looking elsewhere is scripture. Another time maybe.
When tough times come we need to remember two things. First, that in looking for solutions to life’s problems, Jesus is the answer. Secondly we also need to remember that how Jesus solves the problem is up to Him. He will do what is in our best interest in our relationship with Him. In the story, everyone knew what they thought was important. Jesus told the man what in his case was the important issue. For us, the answer Jesus gives us will always turn out to be the better one if we only go to Him first.
Faith for Life 