Present…. but not accounted for..

“Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded y five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie, the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him,

“Do you want to get well?”
John 5:2-6

Does this guy want to get well ?!?! Duhhh!! I mean, come on Jesus, you’re the Son of God and here’s a guy that has been paralyzed for 38 years – “what do you think he wants?? So why does Christ ask this question? Anyone that I have ever worked with in coaching has heard a flavor of Jesus’ question from me - “What do you want”? And in response to that question I sometimes hear (at least initially) happy, encouraging, noble sorts of aspirations but the most common answer is - “I don’t’ know”. In Romans 12, Pastor Paul instructs us: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

Much of the transformation, both in my life and others around me, comes out of the deep soul-searching, truth-telling, process that we must go through to answer that one simple little question - “Do you want to get well?” Really? Are you sure? Do you want an incredible marriage or do you really just want to be “right?”; Do you want much more time with your kids or do you want the big corner office? Do you want to own your life or is that victim/martyr thing you’re doing more comfortable? What do you want?

One of my favorite movies is the Shawshank Redemption. In the movie one of the old timers, Red explains what happens when you live within the walls of prison too long: “First, these walls, you hate em’, they make you crazy after a while you get used to them and don’t notice them anymore, then, then comes the day you realize - you need them.” And that, my friends is one of the most tragic days of all, the day when I, you, we choose to live behind the walls, choose slavery over freedom and death over life. To borrow a lyric from a song entitled “My Own Prison”, by Creed - “I cry out to God seeking only his decision, Gabriel stands and confirms I’ve created my own prison”

“Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
- C.S. Lewis

“Created my own prison” - Wow! What a bummer, right? And for me, it took many years to get clear that I, not God, had created it and for some of us, that thought is such a bitter pill to swallow we will choose darkness, we will choose prison over and over again rather than face the fear or the pain that keeps us from true freedom. We are born into sheer possibility and then through the years our hopes, our dreams, our desires are relegated to childish whims or romanticism or just being too nostalgic - you need to “grow up” after all this is the “real” world.

“Wake up o sleeper, rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you:”
Ephesians 5:14

Every day, every moment, we get to choose and for many of us, we will settle for the same ole thing. We are present but not accounted for. We have settled for prison’ over freedom. We have substituted ‘getting by’ for being fully alive. We have mistaken the water-hole for the sea.

What do you want? Do you want to get well?