John 5:1-9

John 5:1-9 
English Standard Version (ESV)

  So I did a little research on this particular pool.  Apparently, it was doubted that such a pool existed for a long time, due to the fact that scholars thought the five colonnades mentioned made the text too odd to be true.  You'll never guess what happened when the site was excavated in the 20th century!  Lo and behold, a pool with fives colonnades was discovered at the site!  People have been pushing on the Bible for thousands of years.
  Some people will tell you that if you believe in God properly, all of your problems will be fixed.  Well, I don't really agree with that.  For starters, Jesus Christ had the best relationship with God of anyone who has ever lived, and that got him nailed to a cross.  Here, we've got a paralytic who has been suffering for 38 years.  He waits by this pool for the waters to be stirred up.  The story is that when the waters are stirred up, there is an angel nearby, and that the first person in the water will be healed.
  Well, this guy has been missing out for 38 years.  Do you think he still has hope left?  What's his future look like?  He's seen the water be stirred up for decades, and yet he hasn't been healed.  He and the remaining invalids surround the pool, waiting.
  Do you remember when the internet first came out?  If someone ever emailed you a picture, it took 30 minutes to download.  Heaven help us if someone picked up the phone in the middle of the download.  Now we get frustrated when the movie we're streaming skips a line.  We don't wait very well -- so the idea of waiting 38 minutes, let alone 38 years, is hard to fathom.
  Friends, this life we are living, this faith we are striving for, works on a different timeframe.  You will join in the Kingdom of God one day.  Your sins have been washed away, and all of your brokenness will be healed someday.  You will dwell in the throneroom of heaven eternally.  These promises of God are certain and reliable.
  But the timing is not.  God doesn't assure you a carefree life until then.  God doesn't say things will be easy.  There is no wisdom to tell you that any suffering in your life will pass quickly as you skip from mountaintop to mountaintop.  Life is messy and real, joyous and painful, often at the same time.  What God assures us is that healing is real and reliable and eternal and wondrous and worth waiting for.
  So every day, choose to await the risen Christ with hope.  Choose to persevere, trusting in Christ that life overwhelms the grave and hope will always shine in the darkest of nights.  Life wins.  Love wins.  Christ wins. And because of all that, those of us who wait by the pool, wondering when suffering and pain will end, trust that we will one day pick up our mats and leave the paralysis behind.