John 5:1-9 (NRSV)
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Chapter 5After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Verse 2Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. Verse 3In these lay many invalids-blind, lame, and paralyzed. Verse 5One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. Verse 6When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, "Do you want to be made well?" Verse 7The 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 making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me." Verse 8Jesus said to him, "Stand up, take your mat and walk." Verse 9At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk. Now that day was a sabbath.
Devotion
As a boy I learned in school that it was good to aerate the roots of a plant, so I went home and tried it on one of mom’s house plants. It died, and I was in trouble. I tried to do good, but bad resulted for me. The same thing happened when Jesus healed at the pool of Beth-zatha. He sought to do good, but he healed on a Sabbath and acquired enemies. Jesus refused to fit the categories the religious leaders had.
As is often the case in John, Jesus used misunderstanding of physical happenings to share the news of God working in and through him. As we live with physical events every day do we use them to point to God? Jesus used the physical, the ordinary and sometimes the extraordinary to get people out of their limits to God. Can we do the same?
Prayer
Heavenly Father, thank you for every day physical realities and events. Please grant that we rejoice in these gifts and use them to reach beyond human boundaries to show your greatness in Christ. Amen.