As our province returns to more restrictions, I am sure many of us are again holding our breath and wondering when we will be able to return to some form of normalcy again—when we can return to work, when we can eat together, gather together, worship together. It seems like every month for the past year, we take a step forward and two steps back. We languish; we wait in distance and try to hold on to hope. But what are we hoping for? What is sustaining such hope?
I was reflecting on John 5 this past week, the story of Jesus healing the sick man, a man who has been paralyzed for 38 years. I highlighted that verse—verse 5—and sat with it,
One of the men lying there had been sick for thirty-eight years.
38 years. For 38 years, this man has been lame, unable to walk. Yet, I would imagine there were moments in his life where he was hopeful, where he prays fervently with hope, or when he learned about the legend of this pool by the sheep's gate where said healings occur when an angel stirs the water. These were moments of hope, I am sure. And yet, these moments become disappointments as well. As he waited under the colonnades waiting for the water to be stirred, he never got the chance to enter the pool as someone always got ahead of him (v7). Imagine that, every day, he waited anxiously for that moment, and if and when the water was stirred, he could not get there in time.
Hope and yet, disappointments.
Today for many of us, we are in this same predicament. The infection rate goes up and down; our kids are in school and then not; businesses open and close. Questions haunt our thoughts every day: will I get infected on my next trip to the grocery store? Will my kids at school? An emotional roller coaster ride of questions, hope, and disappointment.
For many of us, we try to create our own hope and find our way through the pandemic and crisis. We attempt to control what we can control, but we have seen in this one year that there is nothing much we have control over, whether it is our physical & mental health, our jobs, or our economies. Hope can't be found in our security, our career, or our investments. We can try and create strategies and processes to mitigate risk. Make goals and plans to alleviate our loss of control, but they are all at best, guesses, in our life journey.
So then, what can we truly hope for?
As the lame man sits and waits by the pool, he must have thought of many different strategies of getting to the pool when the time comes: calculating distance to the pool, the people in his vicinity that may help him, the other sick people who he is competing with... His hope is definitely zeroed in on that pool. That is until Jesus came to him and asked one question (v6),
"Do you want to get well?"
What Jesus offered wasn't a lift to the pool or a parting of a path toward the water, but rather a question at the right time and the right place. The truth is, the man's plan to get into the water was not needed. His hope in getting heal in the water was ill-placed. What he needed was for Jesus to come to him and ask, "Do you want to get well?" The hope he needed was a timely divine encounter with his saviour, the LORD Jesus Christ.
Today, we also need such hope. A steadfast hope that is directed toward the heavens, anticipating for Jesus to come at the right time to ask, "Do you want to get well? Are you ready to get up and go?" There is no surer question and encounter we have in this life than this. Whether we will be lifted up on this side of heaven or lifted out to the other side of eternity, hope is certain on both sides of heaven.
Pandemic, wars, economic downturns, famine, and depressions will come and go and repeat. Our current restrictions may get tighter one day and the next day not. Your long-term illness may not have gotten better in the past ten or thirty-eight years, even though there were moments of hope. You may have been out of work for years, and none of the interviews pan out. You have tried and done everything possible. But, dear church, don't lose hope in our God who will lift you up and out one day. A day divinely timed according to his plan where he will come beside us, look us in the eyes and asked, "Do you want to get well? Are you ready to go? It's time."
Hallelujah! Thanks be to God because that day is coming.