38 Years of waiting, then suddenly....

Scriptural Reference: John 5:46 'For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me.'

As I read the scripture I pondered, 'When had Moses spoken of Jesus?' The LORD brought insight and also clarity. The books of the law make us know the composition of the tabernacle. The law of GOD for Israel as His chosen people, various ceremonies, ordinances, feasts and sacrifices were all types and shadows of the New Testament where Christ in the flesh would be manifested to take away the sin that has blighted man since the Garden of Eden when Adam and all creation fell. I saw that parallel but didn't read Jesus as plainly as He seemed to say in John 5:46.

As I kept thinking Jesus gave me an understanding. Moses, the lawgiver chronicled the passage of Israel through the wilderness and clearly delineated the precepts of GOD's law. Moses also did something amazing. Moses wrote, as GOD dictated, the progression of the Creation process and beginning of all life on this planet. I saw the correlation and smiled.

The Gospel of John restates the Genesis that Moses recited. Here in John 5:46 Jesus reiterated, 'He wrote of me.'

John 1:1 'In the beginning was the Word...'

Genesis 1:1 'In the beginning GOD created the heaven and the earth...'

Further along in scripture we begin to see a portrait of Jesus particularly as the lamb at Passover and the promised King to rule forever.

Here in John chapter 5, we see that Jesus has met a man who has been lame for several years. The scriptures further advise us that the man was lying near a pool. He was one of untold people waiting for the waters to be agitated when the angel came and then to be first in those waters before they calmed again.

Jesus saw the lame man and knew how long he'd been in that state of waiting, dependence, and longing. Jesus asked a question without insult or presumption. 'Do you want to be whole?' The man's reply was not 'Yes' or 'No.' The man begins to explain to Jesus why he is at the pool; how he is dependent upon some unknown someone to convey him to the healing waters; he recounts his missed opportunities. The man is too dejected and distracted by his condition to see that someone greater than the angel who troubled the water had arrived to change his life.

I think these verses reflect the anguish of a heart that has a frail hope. The hope is not utterly gone. The hope is trembling in the slightest breeze and insinuation of doubt. GOD has given to each of us a measure of faith. We have the liberty to place that faith where we will. When misplaced faith fails to produce the desired result our hope will be shaken. Years of compounded disappointment ('No one to ___') coupled with repeatedly watching someone receive what is longed for is a blow to the expectant heart. This feeble man replied to Jesus with a mouth full of gravel and the decades spent hoping that seemed wasted.

But just now I realize. This man did not know Jesus. This man did not know of the miraculous deeds Jesus had done, that people all over Galilee would have been talking about. This man's limited perspective did not recognize the day of visitation.

This man had been infirmed for 8 years longer than Jesus was alive at the time of this meeting. This man was infirmed while Zacharias, husband of Elizabeth, was waiting his turn to return to the temple and burn incense again. As Zacharias was made aware of his scheduled days in the temple - this man was already infirmed. This lame man was waiting while Mary, the future mother of Jesus, was a young child. Her future veiled in the quiet like the pre-dawn of days unlived. This man was infirmed then. He was infirmed while Zacharias stood at the altar and heard the angel prophesy that his barren wife Elizabeth would give birth to a son who would be a prophet of GOD. 

The man was lame while the virgin Mary was sought out by the angel Gabriel. As Mary marveled and uttered her amazed, '...how can this be...?' he was infirmed. While the unobserved couple journeying from Nazareth to Bethlehem found shelter in a barn late in the evening, and in the stillness of an evening The Redeemer was born - this man was still infirmed. Through the silent years of Jesus life when a nation waited for a revolution, and a revolutionary - this man was still infirmed. His body shriveling and atrophied from the years spent still because he could not move. He waited. He wondered. He hoped. 

As Jesus was being baptized of John, tempted 40 days and 40 nights – the lame man waited. Without knowing that his hearts hope and soul's healer was walking closer to the place where he laid infirmed. He waited. Thirty-eight years of waiting, then suddenly the shadow of Jesus approaching lay across his body like a leaning tree. Here, finally, and at last at the place where this man's affliction has found him a unique and audacious convergence made the air crackle with unbound anticipation. Maybe the man woke that morning with a soaring desire or a fragment of some thin threadbare daydream. All that mattered to Jesus was the man and Jesus's agenda was to heal the man's body and heal his whole life. Finally. Today. At last!!!

Jesus cared about more than healing the man's obvious infirmity. Jesus came to heal the soul of his disease. Jesus came to mend the broken heart within the paralytic man. Jesus came to free the soul in bondage when the long wait had wearied him beyond expression. 

Jesus knew that the healings of sight, hearing, limbs straightening and all of that were mere bandages. Needed and spectacular as they were Jesus knew those things were a temporary cure. As Jesus healed the man at the pool, He had His eyes on a place of eternal redemption and wholeness for all people everywhere.

Jesus paused at this pool on His way to the Cross of Calvary.

   - Know that Jesus sees you

   - Know that Jesus can and will heal you

   - Know that Jesus has compassion enough to make you truly whole

Feel free to shine,

One Light

 

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