Hands and Feet
5 min read
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.
John 5:6-9a
This handicapped man is the poster child for someone harboring a “victim” mentality. It might seem ridiculous for Jesus to ask the man if he wanted to get well. Of course he would want to get well, right?
But that was actually the most important question that the man needed to ask himself. The answer to that question had been swept under a rug of complacency and inertia in the man’s heart.
Inertia is the principle in physics that things in motion will stay in motion and things that are still will stay still unless there is an external force that acts upon the objects. We see that principle at work all around us and also in ourselves.
And the answer to the question for the man had always been, “No. I don’t want to change, thank you very much. I’m comfortable where I am. I’ve built my life around sitting here by this pool and having stronger, healthier people beat me to the pool because there is no one to help me.”
The man had a “purpose” in his life: to go to the pool everyday. The man had “hope”: to get into the pool when the water bubbles up. The man had “community” in his life: to compete with those who are stronger and to curse the nonexistent friends who would not help. The man had “justification” in his life: to wallow in self-pity and weakness. The man had “self-actualized.” He had everything he thought that he needed.
Jesus’s question was swept away every day in the man’s heart by being conveniently ignored—until Jesus came and directly and explicitly asked him. And so when asked, the “justification” system in the man’s heart engaged so that he could wallow in self-pity and invite Jesus to wallow in his pity, as well.
That man was a child of God, and he became perfectly satisfied in his own unhappiness. And that man reflects a tendency that many believers have. Having confessed Jesus as our Savior, our ultimate satisfaction is the hope of getting into heaven. But we don’t really receive the salvation that Christ offers to us in THIS lifetime. And so we get stuck in the inertia of brokenness and unhappiness. We get used to it. We build a life around it. We become satisfied in our self-pity and the lack of power in our lives.
Why do we do that to ourselves when Christ offers us so much more by being with Him and walking with Him daily?
Father, Forgive my complacency and inertia. Holy Spirit, act in my life and move me out of any self-pity and helplessness, when You give me all the help I need. In Jesus’s name. Amen.
