John 5:1-16
There was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem at the Sheep Gate a pool called in Hebrew Bethesda, with five porticoes. In these lay a large number of ill, blind, lame, and crippled. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been ill for a long time, he said to him, "Do you want to be well?" The sick man answered him, "Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; while I am on my way, someone else gets down there before me." Jesus said to him, "Rise, take up your mat, and walk." Immediately the man became well, took up his mat, and walked.
Now that day was a sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who was cured, "It is the sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to carry your mat." He answered them, "The man who made me well told me, 'Take up your mat and walk.'" They asked him, "Who is the man who told you, 'Take it up and walk'?" The man who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped away, since there was a crowd there. After this Jesus found him in the temple area and said to him, "Look, you are well; do not sin any more, so that nothing worse may happen to you." The man went and told the Jews that Jesus was the one who had made him well. Therefore, the Jews began to persecute Jesus because he did this on a sabbath.
Dawg's thought:
Today's prayer intention is for those who struggle with homosexuality, that they remain faithful in chastity and that they see and uphold God's truth.
As I contemplated the man in today's reading, he had a lot of things going against him. He had a lot of circumstances that stood in his way of getting to the water.
The more I thought about that, the more I thought about how his hope was the water and not the God Who stood before him. The man didn't need the water, but rather The Savior.
In our lives, we can look at our different circumstances and make the solutions "gods" in our own lives, or we submit our weakness to Our Lord who stands before us and asks us, "Do you want to be well." Take care and God Bless.
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