Christ Jesus, help me stand up, take up my bed and walk...

John 5:1-16
 
Tempted to stay in my comfortable and all too familiar  recline of being a victim, I find it all too easy to ignore Jesus’ healing counsel to ‘Stand up, take up my bed and walk.’ Like the man sitting by the pool of Beth-zatha for such a long time, I too become comfortable and all too familiar with lying in my bed of ruminations about the whys and why-nots of my ‘unfortunate’ situation.  Jesus comes to me as he did to the invalid man and asks me, not “Why are you not healed yet?” but rather the critical question at hand: “Do you want to be made well?”. Cutting through all of my excuses, my ruminations and my self-victimizing, the Lord then says, “Stand up”, which is another way of saying, ‘bring yourself up to your full stature of who you are meant to be and look me in the eye’. Then he says, “Take up your bed...”, in other words, ‘move beyond victimizing yourself’. Finally Jesus tells me, as he told the man who had been ill for 38 years: “And walk,” meaning, ‘get going and engage your life’s journey!’  Do I want to be made well?  Am I willing to listen to Jesus and do what he counsels? Christ Jesus, when I am doing sickness of any kind, bid me stand up, take up my bed and walk.
 
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. (Psalm 34:6)
                            
A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.GK Chesterton   
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Soli ad gloriam Dei