John 5: 1-9 is about a man who is waiting at the side of healing pool and had been for 38 years. People had rushed by him and in healing jubilee never helped. So he sat on his mat and waited for help into the pool. Jesus comes along and asks this man "do you want to be made well?" (v.5 NRSV) and the man putting them on never being helped explains how for all these years no one helped him. Jesus command him to get up and walk and at once he could.
It seems to me that if he really wanted to get into that pool he could have. How did he come to be sitting on the mat on the edge of the pool in the first place? I am sure the pool wasn't built up around him. I just can't believe that in 38 years no one could have been asked to put the man in the pool. I just can't imagine. Unless he was happy were he was. If not happy comfortable. If not comfortable content. If not content afraid. Afraid of what his life would be life after he was healed.
Jesus must see this too, so he asks him "do you want to be made well?" Not do you have faith / believe like he has asked so many others but instead he puts it on the man. When the man answers, he still doesn't fully exclaim "YES" instead he gives excuses as to why he hadn't up to that point be made well. Later we still see him making excuses. Even after he had "gotten" what he "wanted" I am not sure that he did.
For 38 years he sat at that pool, for how ever many years before that he lived crippled. This is what he knew. Change is hard for us. Change is fear into the unknown. Yet it is in change and transformation that better comes. It is in change that hope is confirmed and grace is found. For 38 years he lived so close to the cure and so close to the change he wanted and yet he never took it. He didn't live into his potential.
How many of us live on the side of the pool instead of rolling in? How many of us proclaim we have hope and yet don't live into the hope offered? How many times do you proclaim the miracles of God without accepting the magnificent grace of Christ?
Don't waste your time watching everyone else become whole through a relationship with the Divine. Don't waste your time saying "you want" something that you aren't willing to actually accept. Push yourself forward. Take the leap into the unknown and trust that the Holy will be there. Imagine the life this man could have had had he only gotten in the pool 38 years before, instead he watch as others allowed themselves to be transformed. Instead he watch as others live out good lives. Don't waste your time on the outside, jump in.
Don't let fear, reason or whatever it is that is holding you back stand in your way. Take this day to allow the change you have been waiting for, longing for, to take hold and wipe the old away and start anew transformed.
