John Chapter 5

John 5:1-15   The Healing at the Pool

At the beginning of this chapter, Jesus visits a pool surrounded by many people who are disabled.  It is a place where people gathered in the hopes of being healed.  Jesus approaches a man who he learns has been sick for 38 years.  Jesus asks him if he wants to get well.  The man is not begging to be healed and does not even know who Jesus is.  The man replies that every time he tries to get into the healing waters of the pool, he is pushed aside by someone else.  Jesus tells him to pick up his mat and walk and the man does!  This took place on the Sabbath and the Jews there tell him it is forbidden for him to be carrying his mat (day of rest).  When he turns to look for Jesus ("the man who made me well"), to explain his reason for carrying the mat, Jesus has slipped away into the crowd. 

John 5:16-30   Life Through the Son

In the middle of this chapter, Jesus runs into the healed man again and the man points him out to the Jews.  They immediately berate him for doing work on the Sabbath and want him dead.  Jesus defends himself by saying that, " 'My father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.' "  This infuriates them more because he is now claiming to be equal with God.  Jesus goes on to say that is doing what His Father has given him authority to do and that those who don't believe in him, do not believe in God.  They will be condemned.

John 5:31-47   Testimonies About Jesus

In the end of the chapter, it is obvious that Jesus is addressing Jews that had their attention set on each other, on self-seeking and praise from each other.  They were not accepting Jesus and therefore missing the whole point, that praise comes from God and in order to receive it, they would need to see Jesus for who he was. 

I love that Jesus is telling it like it is when speaking to the Jews in this chapter.  They are reading Scripture but have no faith in the man that is standing before them.  I imagine it was difficult to believe certain things, miracles that Jesus was performing, things that he was preaching about, things that people were seeing him do, but regardless, you would think they would have been intrigued and not so judgmental.  However I think that is what holds people back today sometimes, that the stories of the Bible are hard to imagine, hard to believe sometimes.  This is where faith comes from and where we as Christians need to share (not force upon) what we know to be true about God, what we have learned from Jesus, in any way we can. 

Something to bless your day with...

The following was taken from www.kissesfromkatie.BlogSpot.com She (Katie Davis) wrote a book a few years ago about how Jesus "wrecked her life and put it back together more beautifully" as she gave up her "normal" life in the US and moved to Uganda to help the orphan, the widow, the sick. I aspire to be like her; to be better at becoming more Christ-like, as well as she does. She started an organization called Amazima (meaning "the truth" in the local language) (www.amazima.org) and has adopted 13 little girls. I pray this journal entry she wrote over two years ago, blesses you, the way it has blessed me....

It is a bit overwhelming to realize that you have bled your whole heart – the ugly sin, the raw emotion, the unbridled truth – out on paper for the whole world to read.

It is a bit exhausting to hear over and over again how “awesome” you are when you, in fact, know very well that you are not.

People expect romantic, and all I have is a wildly disorganized bookshelf and dirty children shrieking with too-loud laughter. People expect that the days all hold life-saving medicine given to children on the brink of death and profound revelation and while some do, most consist more of peeling potatoes and wiping spills and listening to recited memory verses and biting my tongue as spaghetti sauce splatters everywhere and I light the pot holder on fire, again.

I believe the lie that I must meet expectation, and I try harder. I stay up later answering emails and I desperately try to finish a book that I said I would endorse and I organize the bookshelves and wipe down the counters again. I brush past the children who hold my heart in order to be a “good mother” who has homemade food on the dinner table on time. We finish lessons and recite Psalms and fold laundry and welcome visitors. Life gets too busy, it gets so fast and so full that at the end of the day it can feel just empty.

  

* * * 

This was not the first time I had been here and I knew what to do. I pull back, I dig into the Word and I listen. The lesson whispered in the quiet is always the same. My friend Sara calls it Adoration. My friend Ann counts it all up as Eucharisto. Paul says it’s the secret of contentment, hands full or hands empty. Whatever we name it, it is astounding Truth: Communion with the Savior is the only thing that makes anything matter.

I choke because my every day life begins too feel small compared to the expectation. And He breathes truth that a life is not made by lives saved or bellies fed or words written. To adore the one who created the Heavens and the Earth, to give thanks for who He is and all He has given, to worship and commune with Holy God, whispering in the quiet, clinging in the noise, believing in all circumstances – this is what makes a life large.

The miracle is joy in Him in a day that goes all wrong. The miracle is standing in awe of abundance as I chop carrots and bathe babies and fold laundry. The miracle is a Son sent to die for the very likes of me and His ever-pursuing love for me still.

Paul knows the secret, and even when I think I learned this lesson already Jesus teaches me again: we can live a full life wherever we are – even in the days that seem to small – when we live in communion with the Savior. We look up, praise on our lips, and as we worship Him for all He has done our hearts open wide to more. We wait, expectant, for all that He is doing and this is it, this is life to the fullest.

Foster babies go back to their families. How do you raise a child as your own and then say good-bye? I guess because you know that God ordained their family to be another one, but that doesn’t make it easy. My baby will start therapy before she starts kindergarten. I do not like the idea of a child having to endure trauma so that one day she may learn from it, or teach another about it. But I still believe He has purpose, even when I can’t see it. I look outside at the insanely noisy game of tag taking place in my yard: 4 Hindu neighbors that my children are praying desperately to reveal Christ to, 2 little girls off the street who lost their mother 2 weeks ago and passed by for a drink of water, 13 little girls that have walked through hell and made it out on the other side with a family. Is there anything my lips could say but thank you? I don’t know what to make of it all, but I can’t think of anything to do but praise the God who is always working and will not leave us here. Where I end, He is only just beginning.

Paul says he strains to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of him and isn’t this why He took hold of us -that as we open our lips to praise Him for who He is, He opens our hearts to be transformed in His likeness. He trades my dirty rags for the splendor of Him, breathes new life into dry, dead spaces.

We know the secret: Christ Jesus crucified and risen from the dead reaching out for relationship with you and with me. And a heart turned toward Him is the only way to live full of joy.

On the days when children run around the yard happy and the bread rises warm in the oven and those we’ve been nursing return home with new life in their veins, and on the days when the reading doesn’t get done and I half carry a mother up the hill to the place they will lower her 3 year-old’s body into the ground because of a fever – a fever! -  and life seems too unjust and the head wants to shake “no”, my lips will say yes to all that is Christ and I will adore my Savior.

Communion with God is what we are standing up under here – on the days that go as planned and on the days that don’t. On the days with expectations left unmet and dinner running late because of an extra game of hide-and-seek, on the days that seem mundane and the days that seem magnificent, we are saying yes to all He gives and we are saying thank you.

O God, you are my God,

I earnestly seek you;

my soul thirsts for you, 

my body longs for you,

in a dry and weary land

where there is not water.

I have seen you in the sanctuary

and beheld your power and your glory.

Because your love is better than life,

my lips will glorify you.

I will praise you as long as I live,

and in your name I will lift up my hands.

My soul will be satisfied as with the 

richest of foods;

with singing lips my mouth will praise you. 

Psalm 63:1-5

John, Chapter 4

I really like this chapter.

This chapter reminds us that Jesus loved all people. Not the "perfect" ones, or the "good" ones, or the "better" ones. He loved--loves--us all. And this isn't the first nor the last we are going to see of this. He eats with and stays at "sinners" homes. He heals on the Sabbath.  He touches lepers. He LOVES us. (The only reason I put sinners in quotations, is because, aren't we ALL sinners?!)

This chapter begins with Jesus leaving Judea and heading toward Galilee. This meant He'd have to avoid Samaria, as most Jews do, or go straight through it, since after all, it was the shortest route. Jews at this time avoided Samaria due to some Jews having intermarriages with Gentiles (non-Jews), and therefore "impure" in most Jewish eyes. These intermarriages and inter-racial couples took up residence at Samaria and were called Samaritans. Here, in Samaria (instead of avoiding the region, like the typical Jew would do) at the local well, Jesus talks to -aghast! a woman, a sinner, and a Samaritan! And tells her that she could be saved and thirsty no more, should she drink from the everlasting well of living water. (4:10)

See? Jesus talks to us. He talks to us sinners, us women, us "impure" ones. And is gentle, is loving, and saves us. Why? Because He loves us, so, so, so much.

When the disciples return from getting food, they try to convince Jesus to eat something, but He tells them that He fills up on God, His Father. We must do this too. I forget sometimes, or I decide sleep is more important than getting up early and starting my day with Jesus, and then within a few hours, when I'm stressed out and drained and wondering why, I remember.. Oh, it's because I did not get filled up first by my Heavenly Father. I must get full on Him first, so that He just spills out of me and splashes onto everyone around me.

Jesus is then tracked down by a royal official, asking "sir" Jesus to heal his sick son. By calling Jesus sir he puts himself below Jesus, even though officially, he is above Him in law. (Information taken from my Life Application Bible.) Jesus tells the official, "You may go. Your son will live" and then my favorite part: the man took Jesus at his word and departed. He instantly believed in Jesus' word. He instantly had faith that because Jesus said so, it was so. Such faith. I pray we all have that kind of faith, especially when we need it the most; when facing a trial like a sick child. (And of course the child was healed instantly.)

I honestly don't know how people who don't believe in the Bible, in our Heavenly King, in the Holy Trinity, go through life successfully and are able to face trials. If I didn't have Him, I'd be eternally lost. I thank Him every day that I found Him-- because He's always been here; He's always known me; He has always and will always love me. And so in turn, I give Him everything I possibly can... after all, it's all His anyway.

~M