Do you want to get well?

John 5: 3-6 "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?”

This is a lovely story of renewal. In particular, it's noteworthy that Jesus asks the man by the pool if he does in fact want to be well. We get the sense that if the man had said, "No," then Jesus would have let him continue to be unwell. Jesus is unsatisfied to simply force us into renewal. Instead, he desires that we also wish for renewal and that we choose to participate in and receive it willingly from him.

Jesus is standing today, asking if you also want to be well. He's not saying that it will be easy (the man by the pool's initial response, "but I can't"); he is simply asking if we desire it. Take some time to meditate this morning on the spaces in your life where you think Jesus might be asking, "do you want to get well?"