At the Pool of Bethesda

John recorded the healing of the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda who, along with many others, was trying to be healed by going into the water after a certain event.  The gospel writer recorded, “In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.”  The man had been afflicted for 38 years when the Savior came to him and asked if he would be made whole.  The man suggested that he couldn’t be made whole in these words: “Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me” (John 5:1-7).  So was this mystical power of the water there real?  Was the man right in trying to seek healing in that way?  John’s statement seems to assume that this was reality (but a simple statement such as “the people believed that…” could have easily been lost in translation).  Elder McConkie suggested that there really were no special healing powers to the water and that the man was searching healing in that way in vain: “Any notion that an angel came down and troubled the waters, so that the first person thereafter entering them would be healed, was pure superstition. Healing miracles are not wrought in any such manner.”  It seems that this man had placed all his hope on a superstitious account, remaining there day in and down out hoping in vain for some person to help him take advantage of these apparent magical powers.  But it was only when the Savior came that he could really be healed.    

            I think there is a powerful message in this story for us today about turning to the Lord—and not man—for help in our challenges.  The world will often present to us semi-spiritual solutions that speak of the divine but are at the core the philosophies of men.  Here this man had been told that an angel came down and touched the waters, imbuing a kind of mysticism to the story that drew him to believe the tale.  But it was not based on truth and it depended on the strength of man (getting first to the pool) to be administered.  Real healing and help and strength, though, comes directly from the Savior.  All those years the man could not be healed despite being so close to this quasi-spiritual solution of man (which, of course, couldn’t really make him walk).  It was only as he was able to get help from the Way, the Truth, and the Life, even Jesus Christ, that he was able to be healed.  And the Savior’s healing wasn’t limited because the man was slow to move or weak in the eyes of men.  He was there to heal all those who could believe on Him.  We are often much too quick to turn to solutions of man, to try half-baked spiritual suggestions instead of seeking to go to God first for light and truth.  Of course we don’t deny the help that may come from inspired solutions of man, but our loyalty and devotion and earnest efforts should be focused first and foremost on the Lord.  He is the only one who can truly make us whole as he did for that man and so many others.