Ability

Pamela Kennedy May 25, 2025 3 2

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John 5: 1-9 (NIVUK)

1 Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. 2 Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda[a] and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. 3 Here a great number of disabled people used to lie – the blind, the lame, the paralysed. [b] 5 One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, ‘Do you want to get well?’

7 ‘Sir,’ the invalid replied, ‘I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.’

8 Then Jesus said to him, ‘Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.’ 9 At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

The day on which this took place was a Sabbath,

A man with a mat speaks:

“‘Do you want to get well?’ he says. What kind of question is that?
The sort that mobilises.

They’ve come and gone for all this time and nobody has ever asked. I’ve become part of the furniture: an oddity, poolside sculpture, languishing, the fullness of my need always on display. So very public; so very alone.

Chronic illness does that. Everyone knows, everyone sees, but before very long the checking-in dries up. Concerned faces blink and return to their daily lives. All of it makes them uncomfortable, you see. Confronted with the reality of long, drawn-out, immoveable pain.

His very question is a jolt. He sees! Even that nourishes more than the water ever could. Get up! In an instant, I am spoken back to life. My heart beats. The old has gone, the new is here.

I pick up my mat.
I go.”

Prayer:

Father,
For those today living with chronic illness, remind them that they are seen and known. For the stuck ones, those whose circumstances leave them with a sense of incapacity, remind them that You are able. For all of us, with bonds so often of our own making, deliver us. In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen