"Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." Psalm 51:7

What Do You Want?

"Do you want to be made well?" (John 5:6) Jesus asked the man who had been sick with an infirmity for thirty-eight years. The man had lain near the pool of Bethesda day after day, waiting for the water to move. At this pool, an angel went down into the water at a certain time each day and stirred it up. Whoever stepped into the moving water first was then healed of his disease or infirmity. Jesus, knowing this particular man had been ill for a long time, asked if the man wanted to be made well.

Doesn't that seem like an odd question? I mean, if I've been sick for even a few hours, and someone asks me, "Do you want to be made well?" I'll probably reply, "Of course, I want to be made well! Who wants to feel lousy?"

But that's not how this sick man replied. He didn't shout a hearty, "Yes, please!" like we would have expected. Instead he whined, " Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me." Why wouldn't he just say, "Yes!"? Why would he make an excuse? Why would he try to justify his lingering by the pool all those years when healing was so close at hand? Perhaps because Jesus' initial question to him was the key to the whole matter: The man really didn't want to be made well. And I believe the man's sickness went far deeper than his physical infirmity.

Sometimes we are so comfortable in our unhealthy habits and sin that the true heart of the matter is that we don't want to be healed from them. Those familiar actions and thought patterns have become our habit, our routine, our excuse for not moving on to bigger and better things. If we're healed from them, then it's time to move away from the pool and do something else; time to step out of our comfort zone of helpless infirmity and move out into the real world of wholeness and responsibility.

Jesus' ability and offer to make people well still stands. He asks each of us that same question. How will I answer Him? How will you? Do you want to be made well?

Daye Phillippo

March 2006