Holistic Hope

Present Hope

John 5:1-9 records a story of a man who had been sick for 38 years and cannot walk. He has been lying by a pool known to be a place of healing, but he has yet to experience the miracle he longs for.

Jesus is back in Jerusalem, to observe the latest Jewish festival. As he moves through the city, he passes this pool. I imagine it is a place of great hope, but also deep disappointment. Imagine watching as others experience healing over and over again – but you aren’t that lucky one.

But Jesus doesn’t just pass the pool; he stops and speaks to this man. Jesus comes to this man in the midst of his circumstances. Beautiful or messy, with the hurting and in the hard places, Jesus is present. Then he asks the man a question. “Do you want to be well?”

I find it an intriguing question. Jesus could have asked if he wanted to walk. That question would have been appropriate. But Jesus was concerned with this man’s holistic healing and wellbeing.

The man answers with, what I wonder is, a request, “Sir, there is no one to help me get into the water…”. Maybe he was hoping that if this man, Jesus, would stay, he would help him enter the pool first so that he could be healed. The man didn’t yet know who he was talking to, someone with the power to transform his life.