WEEKLY REFLECTION by Pastor Lap Dinh on 1 Kings 7–9 | John 5:6

One hundred days into the journey, we have walked from Eden to Egypt, to Sinai, to Jericho, to Jerusalem, to Solomon's temple. The story so far has shown us this: God always provides a meeting place, and human beings always corrupt it. The garden, the tabernacle, the temple — all glorious, all eventually compromised.

Now in Gospel of John 5, Jesus walks past five porticoes filled with sick people — the blind, the lame, and the withered — at a pool called Bethesda (“house of mercy”). One man has been there for thirty-eight years. Jesus does not ask about his theology. He does not ask for his obedience. He asks one question: “Do you wish to get well?”

The man's answer is full of excuses: “I have no man to put me into the pool... while I am coming, another steps down before me.” Jesus cuts through every excuse with three words: “Get up. Walk.” The man whom Solomon's temple could not heal, the Lord of the temple healed with a word. The covenant Solomon could not keep, Christ kept perfectly.

The glory that left the temple in Book of Ezekiel returned not in cedar or gold, but in a Man stooping over a pool, asking the helpless if they wanted help. What is our thirty-eight-year-old paralysis? An addiction? A bitterness? An unbelief? A relationship you cannot fix? Hear Christ today: “Do you wish to get well?” Stop calculating. Stop excusing. Get up. Walk. He is calling you!