Thoughts On: John 5:1-9

Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, "Do you want to be healed?" The sick man answered him, "Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me." Jesus said to him, "Get up, take up your bed, and walk." And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.

John 5:2-9, ESV

I am a master at making plans. Most of the time I don't even know I'm doing it - it just comes out. My affinity for plans has made this season both sweeter and harder than the other seasons I've encountered, because for once there's not much of a plan at all. I checked a lot of my dreams at the door into adulthood, and while they may have been the wrong dreams, it still hurt to see them go. And at the same time, everything I have now is more than I wished for even two years ago. I got everything I didn't know I wanted.

But the lie is still there sometimes, embedded in my dreams, that Jesus needs to work within my plan.

My plan exhausted me. It still does. And for some reason, I always seem to believe that my plan will heal me. I think that if I do everything the right way, that if I follow the right path toward the right dreams and the right people, that everything will be okay. I still fall into the trap that says that my own goals and achievements will lead to peace. I still believe the lie that anything but Jesus will heal me.

The truth is that Jesus heals in unexpected ways. He did it at the pool of Bethesda, even when the man did not believe. The invalid Jesus sought to heal could only see one path toward wholeness, and he did not deem Jesus strong enough or important enough to make his dream come true. But Jesus did, because Jesus doesn't work in the ways we ask him to. Jesus cuts corners - he jumps outside of the box and take the direct route. And the most beautiful part: Jesus never leaves us broken just because we can only see one way toward healing. Jesus heals us even when we don't know what to ask for. 

So often I hear Christ ask me: "Do you want to be healed?" And so often my answer is one of resignation. I say "there is no way - I will not even admit to the dream any longer." But even when we won't admit to the deepest longings of our hearts, God hears. And God heals. It just may not look like what we expected.