Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 24 · January 24
Thirty and Eight Years
“When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole?”
Jesus walked up to a man who had been ill for thirty-eight years and asked him whether he wanted to get well.
The question sounds so strange that people rush to explain it. Perhaps, they say, the man had settled in. Perhaps begging beside a famous pool had become his living, and thirty-eight years is long enough for an illness to become a way of life. That is guesswork, and John gives us none of it. What John does tell us is that Jesus "saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case." Jesus knew all about him, and He asked anyway.
Be careful what you build on the setting. The line about an angel coming down to stir the water is missing from the earliest copies of John, so what people believed happened at the pool of Bethesda is not something Scripture is teaching you. What the text does give is one sick man's account of it, and it is the saddest sentence in the chapter: "Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me."
Notice that he does not answer the question. Jesus asked whether he wanted to be well, and the man explained why he was still sick. That is a different question, and after thirty-eight years, answering it had become a habit. He never actually says yes.
Jesus heals him anyway, and at first the man does not even know who did it: "he that was healed wist not who it was." The old word "wist" simply means "knew."
The question is still on the table, and it is a real one: "Wilt thou be made whole?" You are allowed to answer by explaining how it is supposed to work. You can list the reasons it has not happened yet, and name everyone who stepped in ahead of you. Jesus heard all of that once, and He still made the man whole. This morning, you are also allowed simply to say yes.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 24 is The Greatest (1 Corinthians 13:13).