Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. Galatians 6:2

Two Choices

            Have you ever been in that place in your life where you knew something really needed to change, you needed to change, your habits or thought patterns or attitude?  You knew this without a doubt, but change seemed impossible.  No matter how many church services you attended or devotionals you read, no matter how much you read your Bible and prayed, the break-through you needed just didn't seem to be happening.  Well, I've been in that place within the last year, and what I learned from it is this; when we're there, we basically have two choices:  John 5 or Mark 2.

            In John chapter five we have the story of a man who had been ill for thirty-eight years.  For all those years he had lain by the pool of Bethesda where angels stirred up healing waters each and every day, but the man had never, in all those years, found a way to get into the water.  When Jesus saw the man there, he asked him, "Do you want to be made well?" (vs. 6).  The man's reply was, "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" (vs. 7).  He had no one?  Seriously?  In thirty-eight years of sitting in the same spot day after day, he hadn't made even one friend?  That would be like us going to the same local restaurant every day for almost forty years without making one friend.  How could that have happened?  Were the people of Jerusalem really that unfriendly, or could there have been another reason?  Maybe the man thought he needed to be self-sufficient and didn't want to bother anyone else with his problems.  Or maybe he was just too proud to admit that he needed help.  Could it have been that he just enjoyed being a victim?  Maybe he realized that if he were to be immersed in those healing waters, he'd have to give up his comfortable, familiar habit of wallowing in the muddy sty of his own self-pity.  If he were healed, he'd have to give up whining!  Are we like him?  Are we? 

            Or are we like the man whose story is found in Mark chapter two?  This man was also infirm; in fact, he was paralyzed, but the difference between this man and the other is that he had friends.  Just as Scripture doesn't tell us why the pool-sitter had no friends, it doesn't tell us why this man did have friends.  Maybe, in spite of being paralyzed, he showed himself friendly.  Or maybe his physical condition was so poor that he had no way of denying it.  Or maybe the people of Capernaum were just naturally more friendly than those of Jerusalem.  We don't know, but one thing we do know:  this man permitted his friends to carry him to Jesus.  And not only that, when the doorway was so crowded that they couldn't carry him into the house in the conventional way, the man made no protest when his friends made a hole in the roof and let his bed down through it.  I can only imagine how terrifying and risky that must have seemed to a person who didn't even have the ability to break his own fall if he'd tumbled off that bed turned flying trapeze!  It's scary to put yourself in someone else's hands.

            In my case, the paralysis was depression, a state brought on by a series of losses which I could not seem to rise above:  a broken relationship with a family member, the deaths of two other family members, the unfathomable suicide of a long-time friend. There were other major disruptions in my life--some good, some bad--at that time as well.  All were destabilizing.  All were immobilizing.  And here's where my faithful friends came in.  They listened, they spoke comforting words and gave me much-needed hugs, but most importantly, they, in prayer, probably more often than I'll ever know, carried me to Jesus.  And that made all the difference. 

            But here's the thing:  if I'd kept all of my struggles to myself, mistakenly believing that because I've been a Christian for so many years I should be self-sufficient by now, or if I'd been too ashamed to confess my weaknesses, none of those people would have known I needed help.  Just as it had to have been scary and very humbling for that paralyzed man to allow his friends to carry him to the only place where he could find healing, so it is scary for us to trust others enough to confess our struggles and ask for prayer.  But it's the only way we'll find healing.  As an aside here, I want to issue a caution about choosing your confessors carefully.  Some people only want the inside scoop on your life because it'll put them a few rungs up on the gossip ladder.  Avoid those folks like the proverbial plague!  They will harm, not help you.  Seek out true friends who will carry you to Jesus without carrying on gossip about you behind your back.

            So, when we recognize the need for major change in our lives we have two choices, John 5 or Mark 2.  Which will you choose?  I'll ask you the same question Jesus asked that man by the pool, the same question I've learned to ask myself on a regular basis, “Do you want to be made well?”

Daye Phillippo

February, 2013