DAILY BYTE
A young minister once asked Gordon Cosby, a renowned pastor of a quite remarkable church in inner city Washington, what he felt the most important thing to remember about the sharing the Gospel with others was. Cosby replied:
“Always remember that each person you see in your congregation sits next to his or her own pool of tears.”
This week’s focus reading is about a man who had been sitting next to his pool of tears for 38 years. For 38 years he had been wasting away and suffering, perhaps slowly growing angry and disillusioned.
Until the day he was drawn into a conversation with a man named Jesus. Now there is something important you have to understand about John’s Gospel (wherein this incident takes place) in that of all the Gospel’s it is by far the most wordy. Jesus gets into all sorts of long and meaningful conversations with all sorts of different people.
These conversations are written so skilfully, provactively even, that it is obviously the writer’s intent to draw us into these conversations, and by so doing to draw us into the Gospel itself.
It’s story becomes our story, it’s challenge our challenge, and it’s hope our hope. So I would like to reiterate that invitation to you – to over this week enter into the conversation that Jesus has with this man as if it is your own. Let its meaning absorb into you so that you become part of this story – the Gospel story.
Because we all have our own pool of tears caused by many different issues such as grief, hurt, pain, fear, doubt, abuse or addiction. Some of you may well have been languishing, paralysed by your pain, next to that pool for what seems a very long time indeed – it may even seem as long as 38 years worth of waiting.
If that is so ... then this story is for you.
As you go through today’s reading, I would encourage you to personalise it to help you enter this story. Read it out aloud to yourself and wherever you read ‘the man’ replace it with your own name (see below).
PRAY AS YOU GO
Gracious God, you have taught us through Jesus how you were never too busy to stop and relate to the very least in society. Help us to trust that you are willing and able to bring healing to whatever may be causing our own particular ‘pool of tears’ . Amen.
FOCUS READING
John 5:1-5 MSG
Soon another Feast came around and Jesus was back in Jerusalem.
Near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there was a pool, in Hebrew called Bethesda, with five alcoves. Hundreds of sick people—blind, crippled, paralyzed—were in these alcoves. One man had been an invalid there for thirty-eight years.
