I'm taking us back to a story in the Christian scriptures — John 5 — about Jesus healing a paralyzed man.
2 Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew[a] Beth-zatha,[b] which has five porticoes. 3 In these lay many ill, blind, lame, and paralyzed people.[c] 5 One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” 7 The ill man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am making my way someone else steps down ahead of me.” 8 Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” 9 At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.
This pool had bubbling water thought to have healing powers, and sick people came to the pool, believing that whenever the waters were stirred up, the first person to enter the pool would be cured of whatever sickness they had.
The text doesn’t say how long this man has been there, waiting to get into the healing, churning water, but it does say that he has been there “a long time” John 5:6. Nobody helped him get in the water. Nobody gave him a hand. Can you imagine the pushing and shoving to go first?
It turns out the man did not need to get into the water to be well!
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