ODB: charlie’s walk on the moon
February 6, 2010 READ: Genesis 5:21-32 Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him. —Genesis 5:24 The documentary In the Shadow of the Moon includes the story of Charlie Duke, one of the Apollo 16 astronauts launched to the moon in 1972. While the command ship orbited the moon, Duke and [...]
ODJ: renewed hope
Instantly, the man was healed! He rolled up his sleeping mat and began walking! (v.9).
READ: John 5:1-11
David Blancarte, a paraplegic, used a wheelchair for 20 years. It’s likely he had lost hope of ever walking again. But that changed recently. Blancarte was bitten by a poisonous brown recluse spider. He was sent to the emergency room where a nurse tested a muscle spasm in his paralyzed legs with an electric current. Five days later the former paraplegic regained his ability to walk.
John tells a similar narrative about a paralytic who had probably lost hope of ever walking again. But that changed when he met Jesus. The paralytic in John’s narrative lay among many who were sick. But his case seemed the most hopeless because he had been lame for 38 years, and he had no one to help him (John 5:5-7).
Jesus took notice of the man. He knew how long the man had been in his condition. Because his almost 4-decade-old disability had probably become a way of life for him, Jesus asked a strange, but probing question: “Would you like to get well?” (v.6). He may have asked this to renew and energize the man’s hope to walk—to live again. Then Jesus commanded the man to pick up his mat and walk. Instantly, the man was healed and began to take some steps (v.9). Jesus met the man’s deepest need with His unlimited power. His power was not diminished by the seriousness of the man’s problem (lameness), the rules of time (38-year condition), nor even by the roots of tradition (Sabbath).
No matter how hopeless our situation seems, we should be encouraged by the truth that Jesus’ power can meet our deepest needs and renew our hope. Sometimes He does it through natural means, sometimes by supernatural miracles. And other times he does it by encouraging others through us, in spite of and even because of our condition. —Marvin Williams
What seemingly hopeless situation are you going through right now? How will you use your current condition to encourage and bring healing to others?
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