A Helping Hand Up!

Tom Barnard

 

When Jesus saw (the crippled 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?”

(John 5:6)

 

You know the story. The man was a career cripple. John didn’t tell us how he got that way. We know nothing about his parents, or even his name. We just know he had been crippled for 38 years. Jesus had a question for him. "Do you want to get well?" Jesus was looking for a one-word answer: "yes" or "no." Instead, the man offered an excuse: "Sir, I have no one to help me into the water when the water is stirred. When I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me." Jesus reckoned that as a "yes."

 

At the very most, the man was hoping Jesus would help him into the water the moment when the bubbles surfaced. Nothing more than that. All he wanted was "a helping hand” down into the healing pool. Instead, he got "a helping hand” up into health and life.

 

Often we are so focused on our immediate problems that we fail to see that God is at work to address bigger and better things in our lives. We pray for answers now to our immediate concerns; God wants to answer questions we haven't even thought to ask. Only he insists on answering them in his way and time.

 

Perhaps we need to lift our sights from the crippled little world around us to discover the world God sees for us. It is bigger and more beautiful than we ever imagined. Perhaps we need to watch for the slender man in the white robe with the question that will change our lives. He’s the one who asks, “Are you willing to put yourself in my hands?" The answer he is looking for is, “Yes.”

 

You can't miss the crippled man—he's the one dancing his way down the street singing, "It's all over me and it's keepin' me alive, keepin' me alive, keepin' me alive. It's all over me and it's keepin' me alive. King Jesus is keepin' me alive!"

 

Heavenly Father, I confess I prefer to do things my way. But I have learned through experience that when I insist on doing them my way, you step aside and let me do them. And too often my way is the wrong way. Help me to learn from my mistakes. Help me to seek your will and your way, rather than insist on my own. And let me recognize your helping hand reaching down to lift me up. That is the path I want to follow. Amen.