Beyond the pool

Part of the human experience that connects us all is that no one is truly exempt from suffering. All of us, to some degree, have gone through or are currently navigating difficult and painful situations. And sometimes, the wait for breakthrough and healing seems to be never ending. As if we’re trapped in this cold, dark tunnel and we know there are matches and candles near us to light the way out but in the heavy darkness, it is almost impossible to find them. So we have no choice but to wait and wander. And before we know it, we’ve been in this tunnel for so long that our eyes have adjusted to the darkness and we have forgotten what light actually is. The tunnel has become our new ‘normal.’

 

One of the reasons I love the Bible is because it does not slap a band aid over suffering. It does not depict a perfect person untouched by struggle. There are countless stories where we see truly broken people walking through their own tunnels. People whose suffering is so great that the world would render them hopeless. And yet, Jesus always meets them exactly where they are. 

 

A story that powerfully illustrates this truth is found in John 5:1-9. John tells us that as Jesus is making His way to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals, He stops by a pool called Bethesda. At this pool, a great number of disabled people used to lie – the blind, the lame, the paralysed. However, this was no ordinary pool because from time to time, the waters would start bubbling and rising. So there became this popular belief amongst the people that an angel would come and stir the waters up and the first person to enter the pool would be completely healed.

 

At this pool, there was a paralysed man who had been there for 38 years. It’s easy to just gloss over this detail, I certainly did when I first read this story, because in our limited human understanding, it’s hard to grasp what that really means. But to really put it into perspective, 38 years is equivalent to 456 months, 1976 weeks, 13870 days and 33288 hours. Now imagine that. Imagine waking up every day, knowing that healing is so close, just a couple of meters away from you, but never quite attainable. Imagine the hope and excitement that would rise in him as the water stirred and bubbled and the disappointment that would come crashing down as someone else got there first. Even so, this man had been trapped in his tunnel for so long that the only “light” he could see, the only hope he so desperately clung to, was the pool. So he waited. Day after day. Year after year. Decade after decade. So incredibly invisible. There he was, longer than anyone else and yet, nothing ever changed. 

 

Until Jesus finds him. 

 

John says that : 

‘When Jesus saw the man lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?” “Sir,” the man replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” But Jesus said to him “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” And at once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.’

It’s easy to read the end of this account and rush to the miracle, to marvel at what Jesus did and move on. And yes, there is no denying that what Jesus did is truly amazing. But I wonder what was going through the man’s head as he’s speaking with Jesus.

 

 After decades of struggling, someone finally stops and notices him. In a moment of what must’ve felt like divine providence, the man encounters someone who might just harbor enough pity to help him reach the pool, the place he believes holds the keys to his healing.

 

However, instead of taking him to the pool, Jesus redirects the man entirely. He doesn’t help him get there. In fact, He completely bypasses and alters what there even means. 

 

You see, the man perceived that the pool was his breakthrough, the long awaited moment when his struggle might finally end. If he could only be the first person there. If only there was someone to take him to the bubbling waters. Only then would he be healed. But Jesus comes and wholly unravels this narrative that has shaped this man’s mindset for so long. I think of the relief and confusion he must have felt. Relief, because finally, striving ceased. Confusion, because the framework that dictated his life for so long no longer made any more sense. The man did not walk away healed because he reached what he perceived to be the answer. He walked away healed and restored because the answer came to him and he welcomed it without hesitation. At the words of Jesus, he stood up and walked, not to the pool but away from it.  

 

I see in the man what I see in so many people, including myself. In our long and tedious wait for breakthrough, we adopt a mindset that limits.

 

“My healing will only come if XYZ happens.”

 

“Once I stop struggling with this or pray harder or fast more, then maybe my breakthrough will come.”

 

We begin to attach conditions, convincing ourselves that breakthrough has to look a certain way or arrive via a specific process. In turn, we place more focus on what we think God should do, rather than who God is. And when the wait turns into days, months, years or even decades, the tunnel around us becomes so dark that sometimes we stop expecting the light to come at all. Over time, said darkness frames our mindset, so much so that we start to create our own version of what the light should look like, if it ever does appear. 

 

But, what we see at Bethesda is that Jesus doesn’t need the pool, nor did He ever need it. He doesn’t wait for the waters to stir or for the conditions to be perfect. Rather, He steps into the man’s waiting, into his suffering and meets him exactly where he is. And Jesus does the same for us today. The question is: are we willing to lift our eyes from our situation and fix them onto Him? Are we willing to let go of a mindset that limits and be renewed by the truth and hope that Jesus brings? 

 

Breakthrough may not always come the way we expect it. And sometimes, the first step out of our tunnels is realising that He is already there. Maybe the light that we so desperately search for isn’t always ahead but has been gently flickering alongside us all along.