There was a time when miracles were expected, even counted on…

Have you ever laid at the pool of Bethesda?  You were hurt.  Deeply hurt.  Many times you attempted to be healed.  You knew healing was possible, it was just that you couldn't quite get to where you needed to go to receive healing.  You had even seen others healed, but not you.

There was once a cripple man who laid at the pool of Bethesda.  The cripple man watched as an angel would stir the water in the pool and someone would step over him, getting to the healing water first.  Time and again, he was stepped over by those in less need than him. They would be healed.  Time and again he would crawl back to his place of waiting, hoping one day he would be healed.

This cripple man waited for 38 years.  Likely, he was crippled even before Jesus was born.  Yet he waited…

John tells the story like this… "Now in Jerusalem by the sheep gate, there is a pool, which is called in Hebrew, “Bethesda,” having five porches.  

In these lay a great multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, or paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water; for an angel went down at certain times into the pool, and stirred up the water. Whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was made whole of whatever disease he had. 

A certain man was there, who had been sick for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had been sick for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to be made well?”  The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I’m coming, another steps down before me.”

Jesus said to him, “Arise, take up your mat, and walk.”
Immediately, the man was made well, and took up his mat and walked.

For this cripple man, it was not the way of the multitudes for him.  It was the way of Jesus that changed his life.  The multitudes kept stepping over and in front of him.  Jesus met him where he was and made him whole.  

Do you wait at the pool of Bethesda?  Have faith.  Jesus is coming again!

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