14.10 | Solution
John 4:43-5:18
‘The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.”’
John 5:7-8
Sometimes the solution you’re chasing is not the solution you need.
We think the solution is a change of circumstance. We think it is a change of job. We think it is access to that doctor or that school or that relationship or that salary band or that skillset. If only I was younger … if only I was higher capacity … if only I was more intelligent … if only I had more money …
If only.
Jesus meets a man today by a pool called Bethesda. It means, in English, House of Mercy. It was surrounded by five colonnades, with roofs over the top. Under these lay the sick, the lame, the blind — those seeking the mercy of passers by.
And there was a particular belief around this pool. It was believed that, on occasions, an angel would come down and stir up the waters. Whenever this happened, the people believed, the first person to get into the waters would be healed.1
Great if your ailment doesn’t inhibit the use of your legs.
And yet, if you’re unable to walk, you stood no chance.
And yet, here he was, thirty-eight years of waiting to get into the water. Waiting for his healing. Waiting for this single solution to his problem that had become the fixation of his life.
If only I could get into those waters.
It’s difficult to imagine what despair the man must have gone through. What disappointment. What resignation. How greatly he must have battled with feeling victim to his impossible circumstances.
But then, Jesus walks by. He sees the man. He knows his story. And He asks him the question that exposes the longing of his life.
Do you want to be healed?
The man brings him his conundrum:
He cannot get to the waters.
It’s funny how we can do this with Jesus. We find ourselves stuck, and we turn our prayer and complaints upon why we cannot get to the solution that we have fixed our minds upon. As if He, too, were limited to fulfilling His purposes through our pre-defined solutions. Our prayers can become about our solution.
But Jesus presents another option.
Get up, take up your bed, and walk.
I love to imagine these moments. Disbelief at the mindless audacity of the instruction (as if it were that simple); a wondering of the possibility that led to just trying to move the legs; the indescribable wonder as those legs started to move; the awesome shock and joy of finding himself standing, jumping, running — disillusionment of decades of postponed hopes inverted into this moment of stunning transformation.
Solutions.
This man did not need the waters. He needed Jesus. He needed to step out of every narrative of limitation that he had ever constructed, defying thirty-eight years of fixation upon those waters, to find that the solution he sought was found, simply, perfectly, and eternally, in Him.
Are you awaiting the solution to a problem? Has your focus become entirely about the solution that you seek, that is beyond the measure of your control to manage?
Simplify the direction of your heart. Bring Him your longing. Bring Him your request. His answers do not always come immediately, and yet He remains the focused solution of all of our problems, our true House of Mercy, our true waters of healing.
Reflect:
Is there a solution to a problem that has become greater in my focus than Jesus?
Pray:
Lord Jesus,
When I hit struggle,
It is my inclination
To fix.
To chase my solutions,
Within the framework of my understanding.
And yet, Lord,
In doing so,
I deny the deeper need of this soul,
Which is always and endlessly
You:
You — before solutions;
You — before fixing;
You — in suffering;
You — my House of Mercy.
And so, Lord Jesus,
I come to you afresh,
With my whole raft of problems.
You are my solution,
And in You, may they be
Fixed.
In Your way
And in Your Name,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
2 Chronicles 33-34 | Psalm 119:33-48
This assumption comes from an addition to some later manuscripts to John’s Gospel, but aren’t found in the earliest versions that we have.