“WHEN ANGELS MOVE THE WATER!”
MERRY MONDAY BY PARRIS BAILEY
“Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay sick a great multitude of of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water.” John 5:2
Last Wednesday ended up being a day when God steps on the boat, or better yet jumps in the pool. Every week I try to go pick up the Marysong girls and get them outside and moving. Being in a house all cooped up doesn’t sound like much fun so I try to get them out enjoying God’s creation and spend some time getting to know them. Lately we have been able to swim in our little pool and spend time sharing. But last week as we were all getting into the pool, one of the newer girls seemed to just blurt out “I am so thankful that God put me here at Marysong, (she was crying) my life is changing, I find myself no longer angry.” Then another girl who had just learned to swim a few weeks before chimed in and said how God has touched her in the Sunday services telling her she no longer needed the cane after three years of depending on it. By now all the girls were pretty much all in the pool and we were all bobbing up and down laughing and telling God stories. I don’t want to forget to add a sister from the church who just found out she had a reoccurrence of cancer who also was in the pool. As I looked at all the girls, I began to feel the compassion of God surrounding us. In front of me were all kinds of diseases, many of them life threatening and it all seemed to crowd around me making me feel overwhelmed. When all of a sudden my overwhelmedness (I know this is not a word) turned into a vision of the pool of Bethesda. God loves to show up in the broken places and I knew He was there in the midst of the fear, disease and regret from past mistakes. I begin to share to all those in the pool to reach out to Christ because He is with us. As we prayed together in that pool, each one began to share that they felt the presence of The Lord.
“To this natural hospital Jesus wended His way on the Sabbath of the feast. As the trained eye of the surgeon quickly selects the worst case in the waiting room, as is the eye of Jesus speedily fixed on “a man which had a spirit of infirmity for thirty and eight years, a man paralyzed apparently in mind as in body.” (Interpreter’s Bible)
Christ comes to us and begins to trouble the water. He bids us to leave the world of men and all their solutions. Jump in with unreserved faith and let Him heal you-it’s time to pick up your bed and walk.