Take It Up and Walk

After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to 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; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Stand up, take your mat and walk.’ At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk. Now that day was a sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had been cured, ‘It is the sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.’ But he answered them, ‘The man who made me well said to me, “Take up your mat and walk.” ’ They asked him, ‘Who is the man who said to you, “Take it up and walk”?’ Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in the crowd that was there. Later Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, ‘See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.’ The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the sabbath. But Jesus answered them, ‘My Father is still working, and I also am working.’ For this reason the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God. John 5:1-18

I have spent more than two years recovering from what began as a ruptured Achilles tendon. Several surgeries, infections and complications, I am still weak and walking with a cane, yet I am getting stronger by the day. I prayed for a miracle and still do, as God is not done with me and has more for me to do. I have learned a great deal in this process. There are all sorts of miracles and my eyes were opened to so many acts of pure love during this time. Jesus goes to the pool called Beth-zatha, a place where only the very sick and dying were. This was the place of last hope and Jesus was there. He healed the man on the Sabbath, because God's love doesn't go by the rules and fashions of people. Healing comes in many varieties, and we experience miracles every day, if we would see them. And Jesus is with us in our places of desperate, last hopes. Take it up and walk today.

Mysterious Creator, your breath is life

your voice a whisper, powerful and holy

your eyes see the pain and suffering here

and send miracles and new life every day.

We sit by the pools of despair and fear

trusting in products and flashy people

we forget to seek you out in our longing

and miss the miracles you set before us.

Let today be the time we open our eyes

let us see the vision of love ahead of us

let us be the miracles other people need

and make us grateful in our daily walk. Amen.