After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Hebrew called Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay a multitude of invalids, blind, lame, paralyzed. One man was there, who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him and knew that he had been lying there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is troubled, and while I am going another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your pallet, and walk.” And at once the man was healed, and he took up his pallet and walked. Now that day was the sabbath.
John 5:1–9 (RSV)
Do brokenness and affliction ever become normal? If it does, how long does it take? Is there a moment when the burden of suffering ceases to be a weight on the soul?
Thirty-eight frustrating years he had been carried to the pool of Bethzatha in the hope that he would walk home. Each night, those who brought him in the morning returned to bear him home. Where in those years did it become routine?
Suffering, disease, sorrow are not of the will and purpose of God. He created us to live in the perfection of Eden. We chose to be carried in the hope of healing that would never come. We would have been God and gained broken lives, always seeking the healing that cannot come.
We can never gain the healing waters. We have no ability to try. So there we lie, hoping against hope to be made whole. Hope comes, speaks to us, and by His Word, water is poured over us. This water heals. This water joins us to His dying and rising. We are lifted out of death into the life that cannot end. We are beyond suffering, sorrow and death, for these former things have passed away.