The Bible stories really capture the imagination, don’t they? We can see the man in our mind’s eye, lying there hoping to be cured for 38 years, but someone always got there first when the waters stirred. We can see Jesus turn up and have compassion on him.

On a Holy Land trip a few years ago I visited the ruins of that pool with it’s 5 porticoes which have been exposed. It was a very special place. I spent some time there taking in the scene, going over the story in my mind.

It’s significant that Jesus didn’t heal him without asking first whether it was what the man wanted.

It’s significant that Jesus was ready to heal him on the Sabbath day, even though that would get him into trouble with the people who thought that their religious rules were more important than love.

It’s significant that Jesus became the stirred, healing waters for the man.

Jesus spoke about living water elsewhere in John, saying that those who are thirsty may come to him and drink - that it would become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life (John 4:14, 7:37, 38)

There’s a spiritual dimension to water. It’s vital to healthy life in so many ways. How many of us love to sit beside a river or the sea, to contemplate and pray?

It’s interesting that Paul and his friends, when they had travelled to the main city in Macedonia, went outside the gate by the river on the Sabbath Day, where they supposed there was a place of prayer.

It’s significant that the women gathered there: that Lydia the businesswoman was receptive to the message of Jesus, was baptised along with her whole household, and prevailed upon them to stay.

When people listen to God, it’s as if water has been added to sodium - there’s effervescence such that all kind of unexpected things happen, as they did in Jesus’s life and Paul’s, and Peter’s and all the saints. It does in ours too when we follow Jesus.

It’s sad that so many people try to stand in the way, as the Pharisees did, thinking that they and their ideas are more important than the living guidance Jesus provides. But God’s love overcomes all obstacles.

We know that following Jesus won’t all be plain sailing, there will be waves and storms, but we can hold fast to the promise that we will reach the other side safely as long as we listen, trust and love. Amen.

Julie Rubidge

 Lay Minister