Waiting In The Strength Of Hope

Here [at a pool called Bethesda] a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.
John 5:3

There are two types of waiting: waiting because you have to and waiting because you want to.

The people around the pool waited because they had to; they needed to bathe in the healing waters. One man had waited years to be healed.

But when approached by Jesus, the man found himself being asked, “Do you want to get well?” (John 5:6).

Joseph Parker probes these two ways of waiting.

WALK WITH JOSEPH PARKER
“The world is a hospital. The person who is in the most robust health today may be struck before the setting of the sun with a fatal disease. In the midst of life we are in death.

“Life is a perpetual crisis; it can be snapped at any moment.

“Blessed is that servant who shall be found waiting, watching, and working when his Lord comes.

“These folk were all waiting, groaning, sighing. A sigh was a prayer, a groan was an entreaty, a cry of distress was a supplication.

“All the people in the porches were waiting. Are we not all doing the same thing?

“We are waiting for help, waiting till our ship comes in, waiting for sympathy, waiting for a friend without whose presence there seems to be nobody on the face of the earth. Waiting.

“One method of waiting means patience, hope, contentment, assurance that God will redeem his promises and make the heart strong; the other method of waiting is fretfulness, impatience, distrust and complaining—and that kind of waiting wears out the soul.”

WALK CLOSER TO GOD
Father, teach me what it means to wait on you for my every need.

You have promised to provide in your time. Guard my heart from fretfulness and complaining, and make my heart strong to hope. Amen.