The John 5 passage is one of the most interesting miracles out of any in the Bible, at least to me. At first glance you may be wondering why this one is so different to me than the others. Jesus goes and heals a crippled man, which He did several times throughout the Bible. Not very interesting...
However, take a look at the beginning of the passage. This place is called Bethesda, and was a massive pool (had five colonnades) which when stirred people believed that it would heal them of whatever malady that they had. The only issue is that you needed to be the first one in the pool after it stirred for it to work. The text further states that the blind, the lame, and the paralyzed all sat around it's edge waiting for the pool to be stirred.
So Jesus goes to this pool and hears of a man that had been waiting there for thirty years and had never made it into the pool because he had no one to carry him into it. Thirty years of hearing others exclaim that their disease and sickness was cured and knowing that you lost your shot once again. Jesus in his compassion heals this man and tells him to rise up and walk. Which the man does.
What's interesting to me is that it never says that Jesus healed any other person at this Bethesda pool. The story says that there were a great multitude of people there waiting to be healed, and yet only one man is healed by Jesus, at least in the story.
How many times have we wondered why God heals only certain people, and not others?
How many times have we seen others around us blessed, but we feel completely left out?
1 comment:
It's also wierd to me that later Jesus finds this man at the temple and tells him to quit sinning...did his miraculous healing not cause any change of heart? I wonder if that is ever the reason why God chooses not to heal some...
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