Living Water

The young girl studied the old man’s weathered face as they stood on the broken stone steps leading to the water. She was certain this was the place.

Throughout the morning, she had listened to her uncle’s tales of a childhood spent in the streets of the bustling city. These were stories she’d heard countless times, but because she was being raised a half day’s journey from the city, this was the first time the two had walked the streets together.

Jerusalem, with all its noise and chaos, brought a certain wonder to the girl’s heart. The old man was not her uncle by blood. He lived in a home near her own. He had looked after her family in the years after her father had left. He often brought food to them and always made sure they had the supplies they needed. He took care of others in their village similarly, but she was certain he loved her family most. For years the family’s adoration for the old man grew. They called him “uncle” out of affection.

The young girl knew his life was not an easy one—her mother told her as much on more than one occasion—but his stories on this day had been filled with joy, laughter, and tales of mischief. The old man spoke of buying grain and other materials in the city as a young boy for a kind grandfather who had raised him after his parents passed away from the illness. He spoke of sneaking fruit with the other children from distracted merchants among the hustle and bustle of the city’s incessant commerce, and of where they’d hide to eat their spoils. She loved these stories like she loved her uncle. They were one and the same for her—a reminder that the tender-hearted man she had grown to love was once a child, just like her.

Ever present was the girl’s awareness that these lovely childhood stories preceded an unthinkable set of adversities that began when the old man was just shy of ten years old, and of the nearly unbelievable events that followed.

___________

As a boy, the uncle had fallen ill alongside his parents. He had experienced occasional sickness as any child does. But not like this. The illness overtook the young family. Mild fevers turned severe. They were replaced with chills. The parents passed away. The boy was spared, but not entirely. The feeling in his toes was gone first, followed by a terrible pain in his legs. The pain continued for ten days as his grandfather’s search for medicinal care was fruitless. Just three weeks after the boy’s fever began, the boy lost use of his legs entirely. The pain that had been so unbearable was gone, replaced by an emotional toll far worse.

The crippled boy’s aging grandfather tried valiantly to find a cure. He inquired of doctors, but with or without the little money he had, they explained there was nothing that could be done. He sought the prayers and healing of religious men who passed through but was told that the boy’s impotence was a result of his dead parents’ sins, the grandfather’s sins, or both. He even sought healing from sorcerers. But the alleged magic left the boy with a painful rash and the grandfather depleted of his funds.

Nearly two years after his initial illness, the boy’s tragic plight continued, this time with the passing of his grandfather. Still a child, the boy, now orphan, was forced to mature without the only family he had left. He survived only by begging; the scraps of food and scanty coins were enough to subsist. The boy had learned to move about with the strength of a thin upper body—using his hands and arms each day to transfer his limp lower half to and from a small alley between two homes where he slept and the busy street where he sat to beg.

For anyone so destitute, the prospects were meager and the environment dangerous. For someone as young and without kin as he was, it was a wonder he made it to his teens. As the boy grew into a young man, his ingenuity and perseverance kept him alive and made him a fixture among the impoverished community in the surrounding area. He met a fellow who was deaf and mute, whose circumstances also forced him to plead each day for sustenance. The two each fended for themselves, but periodically checked in on the other. And for the first time since his grandfather passed, the boy felt there was someone mindful of him. Though the man could not speak, the boy spoke to him and gestured with his hands in a makeshift sign language they both understood. Communicating became easier with time. Their alliance, and the young man’s insolvent circumstances, carried on for many years.

As time wore on, the uncle and his older friend developed a reliable reputation for completing odd jobs among the merchants. For years the two of them found work cracking nuts, cleaning animal waste, and even repairing wheels on the merchants’ carts. While he still begged to supplement the paltry pay he received, he felt a sense of pride knowing he could provide an income. There was one vendor the uncle particularly enjoyed working for. This was because when the customers were out of sight and it came time to close for the day, the uncle would arrive to clean up, and the merchant would speak to him as he would an equal—something the uncle was not accustomed to—teaching him about a Messiah Who would come to save His people, the Jews. The uncle wasn’t sure what to make of such a wishful teaching. To this point in his life, he felt that no one had saved him from anything. Besides, he wasn’t even Jewish. Still, he listened each time the merchant would share his faith.

As best he could in his crude sign language, he shared with his friend what he’d learned about the Messiah.

“Do you believe in this?” he questioned his friend, “Or in any God?”

The man, unable to speak and hands busy working, simply shrugged and thought for a moment before looking at the uncle with a faint smile and nodding happily at the question and its prospect of hope.

The religious merchant was not the only person the uncle heard speaking of faith and miracles. One wanderer told him of a miraculous set of pools on the other side of Jerusalem from where the uncle stayed which had “healing waters.” The man spoke of angels touching the pool, causing it to ripple wildly and enabling the first infirmed person who entered the water to be cured of any ailment—no matter its severity.

“How could it be so?” the uncle asked, incredulous.

“How does a flower grow? How does a sparrow fly?” The vagabond responded, “By God’s angels, that’s how!”

The uncle shared the story with his friend. Each of them allowed a tinge of hope to linger for many weeks before they stopped discussing it altogether. It wasn’t until several years later that they heard anything more about the pools. After a particularly difficult stretch of time for the two men, the uncle overheard two individuals talking as they purchased goods near where they sat. They spoke of the same pools and the healing properties of the water. He told his friend and they convinced themselves they had no other choice at this stage of their lives than to procure a ride to the pools and see for themselves.

After three weeks of work, the uncle and his friend traded cleaning and repairs for a ride to the miracle waters, the “Pools at Bethesda” as they were called—Bethesda being an Aramaic word meaning “house of mercy.”

Their arrival at the pools stirred within the uncle a stew of feelings ranging from hope at the possibility of the lost half of his body being once again a part of him and useful, to fear and anxiety that his belief in something so farfetched would only launch him into a deeper depression than he’d before known.

The water at Bethesda was comprised of two pools surrounded by five large porticos or porches approaching the pools—these areas were covered with diseased and infirmed people of all kinds, waiting for the water’s stillness to be disrupted at any moment—each longing to be the first into the pool and begin life anew.

For several months the uncle and his friend were unable to get near the front of the pools’ edges. Each stone porch was covered in people who had spent far more time waiting for their turn at a miracle—some of them allegedly for years. There was an unwritten rule, mostly unbroken, that the closest ten or so people at each portico were free to vie for the chance at entering first. The trouble was that the water rarely moved. And when it did ripple, it was typically only a few times a week at an unpredictable time of day.

Some thought the movement followed the activity of a nearby spring. Others felt it was a result of the shared water system in the surrounding buildings—basic and unreliable as it was. It was said that if this system was disrupted in one way or another, it could lead to a rippling of the waters at Bethesda. Regardless of the cause, any movement in the usually still pools resulted in a surge of chaos as the nearest infirmed threw themselves into the water, disregarding both fear of injury and social awareness.

This chaos could occur on any day but Saturday. Surprisingly, despite their destitution, the hopeful patrons at Bethesda’s pools carried enough religiosity amongst them that a respect for the Sabbath day meant that rarely did anyone enter the waters on Saturdays. This was likely compounded by the fact that the local scribes and Pharisees often peered in on the sabbath to be sure even the homeless were honoring the religious day.

Their prospects at the pools were next to nothing during the first year, still, despite the uncle’s harbored doubts, the two men developed a plan to work their way toward the front of the pools by alternating one holding their place while the other looked for work or food, and mostly begged. Due to his inability to move about as freely as his friend, the uncle found himself more often lying at the pools and begging visitors for money, awaiting for his friend’s return. This often led to his slow immersion into a deeper despair. Each of them felt the hope of healing slowly extinguished with each passing month. One and a half years had gone by with little to find joy in. They communicated less and less, their diminishing courage all but gone.

One morning, as his friend readied to leave, the uncle sensed an unsettled feeling between the two. His friend gathered his things as usual, only this time he loaded nearly everything he owned into two large bags. He pointed to a few items he’d collected that he would leave behind, and patted the uncle on his shoulder two times, resting his hand there for several seconds. They didn’t speak or sign to one another. Both of their gaunt faces just stared. The uncle understood this was likely the last time he would see his only friend.

In the years that followed, the uncle’s heart hardened with anger. His anger cruelly turned to a heavy depression and ultimately complete hopelessness. He no longer left his portico at the pools at all. This was not because he had expectations of entering its moving waters—but because as his physical body grew weaker, so too did his desire to live. What was a strong fire to survive had waned to a weakly flickering candle. He moved himself to the back of the line again—both in resignation and because it allowed him to be one of first beggars to be seen by the pools’ visitors as he weakly pushed a beggar’s pan in front of him when each person approached.

_______

One Saturday morning, the old emaciated man lay on his side in a hunched position on his dirty mat-turned-bed, surrounded by his only pathetic worldly possessions. He was shaded only by a tattered make-shift cloth roof he and his friend had once strewn together with rags. It did little to shade him from the heat of the day. As he heard steps approaching, he looked to his empty begging pan. He thought for a moment about pushing it out, but even the thought added to his exhaustion and he instead closed his eyes and waited for the party to pass. Instead, the footsteps stopped right at his mat. Something stirred within the uncle’s heart—a feeling he had never felt. He opened his eyes to the brightness of the sun and the silhouette of a man before him. He felt his heart begin to beat more heavily.

“Shalom, my brother.” A kind voice spoke.

The uncle bowed his head, taking care not to look up again in an effort to avoid eye contact as he always did with those from whom he begged. The man looked thoughtfully around at the pools and its residents and a few religious leaders wandering the grounds. He continued, this time with a question that pierced the soul of the paralyzed man.

“Wilt thou be made whole?”

The uncle stammered, surprised at both the question and feelings of hope he still held deep within himself. He cleared his throat, looking to the pools.

“Of course I… I want it.. I um...” he licked his parched lips, taking a deep breath to steady himself. He looked to the water, “Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool,” he said, gesturing to his useless legs. “So yes, I desire it like I desire the breath I require for life.”

The crippled man felt his throat tighten and tears fill his eyes as sorrow enveloped him—the kind of sorrow he’d borne since he was just a boy. His memory of that time was as vivid in this moment as it had ever been. It felt as though he could sense the fever in his head and the pain in his legs that started it all, a pain turned phantom with the progressive paralysis. The tears began to spill down his bony face.

"Sir, I have desired it for 38 years..." he felt the man's gaze fixed upon him as he continued, head down. "But while I am coming, another steps down before me...." it was at this point that the uncle began to weep. He wept like he hadn't wept before. All the pain and hopelessness over the years collected inside of him and tightened his stomach and throat—it was an emotional and physical toll that overwhelmed him.

Suddenly, the visitor before him crouched down next to him. He placed his hand on the weak uncle's shoulder, steadying his trembling. He gently cupped the back of the lame man’s head—ignoring the dirty matted hair and imploring the troubled man to look at him. It wasn't until this moment that the uncle looked up to see the stranger before him. Never had he seen eyes with such compassion and depth. It was as though this visitor knew every day of his infirmity and how broken he had become. The uncle swallowed and could not look away. He felt a complete stillness come over him. The overwhelming tightness and pain entirely left him.

Then the man felt the kind stranger's other hand grasp him by the arm as he spoke once more using words that carried a grace and power the uncle would never forget:

"Rise, take up thy bed, and walk."

In an instant he could never fully explain, the crippled man felt a light enter into his heart and mind instilling peace and emboldening the tiny hope within him. A surge of strength and a remarkable sensation spread through his atrophied legs. And at all once, the Stranger pulled him to his feet.

And he stood.

For the first time since he was a child, he stood.

His breath left him and returned. He covered his face in his hands and he wept once more.

He wept for this Stranger who knew him.

He wept at the very thought of being loved and seen.

He wept at the gratitude that flooded his heart.

He wept for a sliver of hope that, once dormant, was rediscovered and somehow

enhanced.

All the while, the Stranger kept His eyes fixed on the once-paralyzed man. The two embraced, the Stranger laughing softly. With a gentle smile on His face, He nodded to the uncle's bed. The uncle wiped his eyes, picked up his bed, and walked away from the pools and from the Healer. He looked back once more, only to see this Visitor from God still smiling at him. And for the first time since he could remember, he smiled too.

_______

Years later, the uncle stood with the young girl at the same pools. He finally spoke up, confirming what she already knew.

“This is it, my child.”

“I know, Uncle.”

“This is where the Messiah changed me. He changed my body, but more importantly, He changed my heart,” he said, patting his chest softly. He thought of the years that followed the miracle at Bethesda. He thought of the changes he’d made in his life, and the work he put in. He thought of the service he offered to others and the joy it brought him. Mostly, he thought about his Healer. He knew that this Savior's mission was not merely to mend broken limbs, but that he would mend the broken hearted--that souls, once shattered, would be made whole once more. And that somehow, someway, the Messiah would right the wrongs that he, and anyone else who sought Him, endured--and his eyes brimmed with tears of joy at the very thought.

He put his arm around the young girl, “We are His and He is ours. This water did not heal me,” he said, pointing to the pools, “It was God’s Son, the Living Water. May you always keep Him close, my child.”

The little girl matched the man’s tears with her own, “I will, Uncle. I promise.”

(based on the miracle found in John 5; short story written by hb mercy, art by Carl Heinrich Bloch: Christ Healing the Sick at Bethesda)