Stirring Questions

When I read about the suffering ones gathered at the pool of Bethsaida (John 5), I cannot help but think of the places where the suffering ones gather in our own day.  Anyone who has had a reason to go to the Emergency Room on a weekend night has surely seen all kinds of broken and hurting people gathered in one place.  Another place where such a scene is seen is in a treatment room where those struggling with cancer are receiving chemotherapy infusions.  And surely, a place not seen by many of us are the battlefields where men and women lay wounded and dying. 

 

To think of the story in the gospel of John and to imagine similar places in our own day is to wonder what Jesus would do were He to walk into such places.  When John told his story, he did so describing the many who were at the pool of Bethsaida waiting and hoping.  "In these (five porticoes) lay many invalids--blind, lame, and paralyzed."  (John 5:3)  He also spoke of the lame man healed by Jesus as one who had been ill for thirty-eight years.  Thirty-eight years is a long, long time to suffer.  So, what would Jesus do today?  Would He look for the one who had suffered the longest?  How would He decide if He was not going to heal them all?

 

And, of course, the bigger question is "why not?"  Why did Jesus not heal all those who were gathered at the pool of Bethsaida?  How could He walk away leaving so much suffering when He could have healed the many as well as He did the one?  And, why does He show up in the places where sufferers gather today and leave anyone at all still suffering?  My questions stir around within with more certainty than the waters of the pool of Bethsaida.  My answers are few.  Whenever I begin to speak them, I soon become quiet for they sound trite and empty to me.  Surely, they would to the suffering ones as well.