Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”
“Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”
Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”
But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”
So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?”
The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.
Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.
- John 5:1-15
Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say, or because of these surpassingly great revelations. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
- 1 Corinthians 12:6-10
I wrote this little thing three weeks ago. I hope that I am right as rain now.
Yesterday, I woke up, I slid one leg off the bed. It felt like it weighed a ton. Worse yet, every muscle group in my body hurt. I used as much leverage as I could to get the leg back into the bed.
After a while, my bladder woke up. Now, I had to get out of the bed. No matter how much it hurt, I had to walk the entire five feet from the bed to the toilet.
I made it but it was like an infant trying to walk for the first time.
Everything hurt. Each movement of my body seemed to cause me to lose my balance. I never fell, but I rocked back and forth. I grabbed doors, walls, furniture. But I was successful. Maybe with me holding on to something, it might not count as my new first steps. Mommy and Daddy want to see the infant standing without support and walking.
But my computer was in the basement. I never fell, but every step was an adventure.
Jesus asked the lame man if he wanted to be healed. The lame man, if you read it carefully, never answers the question. He simply says that he has no one to put him in the pool – the superstition that the pool will heal him, but he needs to be the first into the pool.
But then Jesus heals Him on the Sabbath and that puts the religious leaders into a lather. They begin persecuting Jesus as a result, according to John’s gospel.
Don’t worry, neither yesterday nor today was Sunday nor Saturday.
But back to my situation: This morning all the pain is focused in the right leg, specifically the knee. I have had little problem walking, except on the stairs. The bad leg precedes going down and follows going up. If I forget, I now use a cane on the stairs. I take it one step at a time.
I am sprinting compared to yesterday.
God has only partially healed me. I am now mobile. The pain is probably going to dissipate in a few days, probably inflammation.
But while I was in bed yesterday, able to move but unwilling to deal with the pain, I prayed for God to heal me. Of course, I did that. But I prayed for guidance. Did I really have to write anything? I am ahead of schedule. I could recover from one day off. But then, I confessed that if I took one day off, the next day would feel just as good on my back. I pushed through the pain. I learned how to walk like a one-year-old all over again. And I wrote two posts, plus a little on a short story. I changed the filters on my hearing aids. I filled my pill pack. And I washed a load of clothing – which was the big adventure of the day.
If this is what God wants of me, then I can praise Him in doing it.
This is not a healing story. I still feel some of the pain. This is not really a stubborn, fight through to meet the deadline story, which has been a story of my life.
It’s more a story like Paul told about having a thorn in the flesh to remind me … Hey, you are human. Stuff happens. Deal with it and know that God is there with you. You can do this. Not as the stubborn strong man, but as the weak person who knows he needs God every second of every day.
Praise the Lord!
This was written about three weeks ago, and I am still not back to my old self, but I am mobile. When you limp or favor one leg over the other, everything seems to get out of position. Then old knee pains are a result of the limping around instead of the original cause of the mobility issues. You just praise God and keep moving.
Soli Deo Gloria. Only to God be the Glory.
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