Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”
“Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”
Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
John 5:1-9
During 2026, Peachtree Church is inviting everyone into Cultivate, a churchwide discipleship plan centered on the fruit of the Spirit and the kind of life God longs to grow in us. Throughout the year, we’ll explore how love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control take shape in everyday life through the Spirit’s work. Cultivate brings together worship, Scripture, group guides, and meaningful practices designed to meet you where you are and support growth in ways that fit your season. These twice-weekly devotionals are one way to stay connected, offering reflection and grounding for daily life with God. Whether you engage in many ways or just one, you’re invited to be part of this shared journey of becoming more rooted in who God has created and called you to be.
Devotional
I had the privilege of leading a devotional for a group of Peachtree members at the site of the Pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem. What is left are the ruins of the colonnades around the waters and the stone underpinnings of what must have been a very large pool or pair of pools, with porches all around the water. It’s a moving thing to read Scripture about a place you are standing in! The word Bethesda means ‘house of mercy’ or ‘house of grace’, and that word has been used ever since in names of hospitals and hospices. In Bethesda, Maryland, the famous Walter Reed military hospital has been the destination for many wounded and sick members of the armed forces.
What apparently filled the pools at the biblical Bethesda were underground springs or reservoirs. From time to time, the surface water would be disturbed by new water coming up from these springs, and a belief grew around this natural phenomenon. Sick or injured people would wait at the edges of the pool, and when the water was disturbed, they would quickly be the first in the water. They thought healing would occur for them if they were the first into the pool. They attributed the movement of the water to an angel who would intermittently show up.
Jesus comes into the Bethesda pool courts and looks at all the sick and wounded people lying on mats around the pools, waiting for the water to be disturbed. They are in desperate straits; blind, lame, and paralyzed. He sees one wretched man who has been lying there for 38 years: think of it! Years spent waiting for healing, with hope all but gone. This is where he lives now, at the edge of the pool. Jesus asks him a startling question: “Do you want to get well?”
If we were there, we might have hissed, “Of course, he wants to get well!” But Jesus wants to know, Do you truly want to be well? Or do you want to lie here in misery because this is how you live now? Have you formed your life around being here? Could you step out of that life, with my help?
And see what the sick man answers. He says, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” We can see that he has lost relationships over this long time of illness and waiting: no one is there to help him. And he is intensely jealous of those who were able to enter ahead of him. It may be that instead of being a place of fellowship and compassion, the pool at the House of Mercy has become a place of competition, people climbing over slower, more feeble people to get what they came for. It’s a small, ugly vision of what this man’s life has been like over these 38 years.
Jesus pulls the man’s focus from the pool, his helplessness, and his competitors, to himself. He simply says, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.”
And he gets up. The long years of immobility and helplessness are over.
What do we take away from this story? We must, in all truthfulness, say that we all have friends who long for healing and who don’t get it, and that is very hard to understand. The process of being ill for a long time sometimes drains not only the sick person, but also those who are caregivers. And it drains the sick person of hope and energy. Jesus sees all of this. Does Jesus condemn this man for his poverty of spirit, and walk away? No: he asks if he wants to be well, and even when the man only answers with complaints, he makes him well anyway. The man doesn’t need this pool and the superstition around it: he just needs Jesus. Jesus jolts him out of his old ways of thinking. And then a whole new life begins.
For Reflection
- What have you observed, in yourself or another, about the effects of long illness?
- Is it possible to be ill but to be healed and at peace emotionally?
- Is it possible for Jesus to reorient a person’s perspective about their illness?
- What does Jesus want for us?
Prayer
Dear Lord, help me to be happy for others who have been healed, even while I have not been. Help me to be patient as I wait for healing but not cut off from others or from life. Lord, make me whole and well, and keep my eyes fixed on You when I am afraid or unsure. You are my help and my strength. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
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Devotionals