‘wherever the river flows, all living creatures teeming in it will live … wherever the water goes it brings health … this water comes from the sanctuary’
I was waiting for the water to move.
By then it was a long time since the day I first came to the pool.
I have no clear memory of that day.
Afterwards I lay beside the clear waters every day, for almost forty years.
I lay, dry as a desert, with parched lips, beside the pool, and turned my eyes away from the water.
You can die of thirst at the water’s edge.
I was not alone but I was so alone.
I could not let anyone know the bitterness of those long years of sickness
and the guilt that weighed my body down even more than the illness.
I have a clear memory of the day I first came to the pool.
It was not one but two lives that were lost because of my sin.
I cursed myself.
And sickened from that moment.
I lay, day after day, turning my face away, even from those who offered kindness,
from the crowds of sick people – blind, the lame, and the paralysed who came with their helpers, crowding into the water when it was stirred.
In the end I made no attempt to move and did not call out,
my body ached with pain and grief.
You can die of loneliness at the edge of the crowd.
I will never forget the first encounter with the stranger.
It was the sabbath day
He knelt down and sighed beside my mat.
A breeze rippled the water and it seemed to say, ‘How long O Lord?’
I turned toward him
and he saw me.
‘Do you want to be well again?
I did not answer. I just gave the story about the futility of trying to reach the moving water before the others, about how I had no one to help me do that.
He did not respond.
The question hung in the air.
What is being well? Shall I get up? And then will I be changed? Will the world change and the long years fade away? Or will I arise and meet the young man I was then, soaked in my own tears?
The stranger gazed at me and a dove flew over the water.
In the moment when I knew that I did want to be well again, immediately, I felt a tremor within me and a surge of life trickling up to the surface of my being.
‘Get up, pick up your sleeping mat and walk.’
I rose up and walked away, carrying my mat.
The stranger was nowhere.
It was strange then, that they challenged me about the mat. Just another sabbath restriction, when I had something great to understand. My body was healed and more … the grief and pain was washed away. My guilt was gone and I had to know who this man was.
I searched for him and found him at last, in the Temple; I asked him for his name and he knew I would tell his persecutors who it was who had committed the minor sabbath infringement. It did not matter. He stood before me and all the years rolled back. At the point where my sin washed up again he lifted the remorse away and I knew a new and holy wellness. He confirmed the cure –
‘Now you are well again be sure not to sin any more, or something worse may happen to you.’
I went and told the critics that it was Jesus who healed me, as he knew I would, and they hounded him then, as he knew they would.
That was a beautiful reflection! May God bless you and all you do!