Be Still And Know

John 5:2-6     Inside Jerusalem, near the Sheep Gate, was the pool of Bethesda, with five covered porches. Crowds of sick people—blind, lame, or paralyzed—lay on the porches.  One of the men lying there had been sick for 38 years. When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time, he asked him, “Would you like to get well?” I love spending time in Jerusalem but it is often impossible to know exactly where the events that we read about in the Gospels took place. But not so with the pool of Bethesda. We know exactly where it is, and you can still see a part of it, adjacent to St Anne’s Church, near St Stephen’s Gate. The pool had a reputation for being a place of healing, but Jesus met a man who had been ill for an extremely long time. Curiously, he asked the man if he would like to get well. On first hearing, this might sound a rather callous question. Surely the answer was obvious. Who wouldn’t want to be healed if they had been sick for 38 years? But it is actually a profoundly caring and important