From Inside Shawshank Prison
A reading for Friday, January 9, 2015: John 5:1-15.
In the movie The Shawshank Redemption, Red says from inside Shawshank prison: "These walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That's institutionalized."
The man lying by the pool at Bethsaida had become institutionalized. For thirty eight years he lived with his infirmity. He was there lying by the pool in hopes of getting healed, or was he? Could it be that he had given up and was more comfortable lying there with the sick and the lame then he was hoping things could change for him? Could it be he had lost the ability to hope for something better?
Jesus asks the man a simple question... "Do you want to be made well?"
Sometimes we get used to the things that afflict us, and the ways we fall short of the life that God intends for us. It's just the ways things are, we tell ourselves. There is no possibility for a change. We have given up hope. We have become institutionalized.
Jesus asks us one simple question... "Do you want to be made well?"
In the end, the man was healed and Jesus commanded him to take up his mat and walk. What is Jesus enabling you to do today in hope of realizing the life you were meant to live? Do you have hope? Are you willing to do something different?
Jesus said, "See, you have been made well!" And the man "went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well."
In the movie The Shawshank Redemption, Red says from inside Shawshank prison: "These walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That's institutionalized."
The man lying by the pool at Bethsaida had become institutionalized. For thirty eight years he lived with his infirmity. He was there lying by the pool in hopes of getting healed, or was he? Could it be that he had given up and was more comfortable lying there with the sick and the lame then he was hoping things could change for him? Could it be he had lost the ability to hope for something better?
Jesus asks the man a simple question... "Do you want to be made well?"
Sometimes we get used to the things that afflict us, and the ways we fall short of the life that God intends for us. It's just the ways things are, we tell ourselves. There is no possibility for a change. We have given up hope. We have become institutionalized.
Jesus asks us one simple question... "Do you want to be made well?"
In the end, the man was healed and Jesus commanded him to take up his mat and walk. What is Jesus enabling you to do today in hope of realizing the life you were meant to live? Do you have hope? Are you willing to do something different?
Jesus said, "See, you have been made well!" And the man "went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well."
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