government to care for them. Some live in a state of
bitterness about their terrible lot in life. Some who
are genuinely ill focus on their pain rather than the
possibilities of using what remains.
paralyzed person to do. "Stand up, pick up your mat,
and walk!" (vs. 8). Suddenly, the man felt strength
where before he had felt nothing. Then he stood on
the spot where he had lain helpless. The mat that had
held him he now held in his hands. His feet, tender
from years of disuse, touched the stone pavement, and
when his toes kicked the small pebbles out of the way
he felt a twinge of glorious pain! The unthinkable had
happened: his legs had been healed.
but a man carrying a mat on the Sabbath. In their
spirits they were more paralyzed than anyone who lay
by the Pool of Bethesda.
this to anyone else He healed. "Now you are well; so
stop sinning or something even worse may happen"
(vs. 14). Perhaps his paralysis was the result of some
criminal act or some moment of youthful foolishness
that injured him. Perhaps his heart, darkened by deep
bitterness, led him to curse the day he was born while
he spewed hatred toward all humankind. That would
have become a pattern that, once the euphoria passed,
he risked slipping into again, despite his healing.
retains the possibility of an eternal youth through the
renewing of the Holy Spirit. But the soul can put up
the most resistance to God's grace and His miracles of
transformation. To let bitterness rule is to place the
individual in far more peril than any crippling disease
or diminishing mind.
keep us ever fresh.