John 5:1-15
The healing of the lame man by Jesus, at the pool of Bethesda, contains many interesting lessons. The one that recently struck me was the manner in which Jesus interacted with the lame man.
In many accounts in the Bible of individuals who encountered Jesus, it was the individuals who sought Jesus out to be healed by Him. For example, we see this in the case of the woman with the issue of bleeding, the paralytic who was lowered down into Jesus’ presence from the roof, and blind Bartimaeus.
In the story of John 5:1-15, we read of Jesus seeking this lame man out. When Jesus found him, Jesus was the one who offered him the gift of healing. Again, this is different from many other encounters where people sought the Lord out to ask Him for healing.
We are told that the lame man had been lying by the pool of Bethesda for 38 years, waiting to be healed, without success. Perhaps the lame man had given up hope, even though he had probably been brought to the pool by others.
The account goes on to tell us of his miraculous healing by Jesus, who then left soon after. Later, we read that Jesus sought this man out again. I find this interesting as there are hardly any other references in the gospels where we read of Jesus seeking the same person out again, after one encounter.
In the second encounter, Jesus reminded the man of his healing.
More importantly, Jesus told him to stop sinning in case something worse should befall him. (There’s something to be said about what the Bible has to say about sin and sickness, though that deserves a more thorough discussion separately.)
Getting back to the interactions of Jesus with this man, one takeaway I have is how God is proactive in His relationship with man.
Related to this is how God loves us enough to seek us out again and again, even when we were not keen to connect with Him.
In this account, there is no indication that the man who was healed, was going to pursue the things of God. There was also no indication that he was thankful to God. It seems that all he did was to go about his life.
That’s something we are all probably guilty of e.g. there could be times when we received God’s goodness unexpectedly, and then we would go about our daily lives unchanged, without being more thankful or more drawn towards the things of God.
Yet the Lord loves us enough not to leave us where we are at.
Jesus loved this man enough to seek him out again, to instruct him about what was most important i.e. to get himself right with God.
May we continue to be open to how God’s works on our lives are meant to lead us closer towards Him.
I pray that as much as we are thankful for the miracles (or blessings) that Jesus has given us, we would also take note of the lesson He wants us to learn from the miracle.
Terrence Leong
Shalom
