Devotion: Look out or look in?

John 5:2-9

²Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Hebrew called Beth-za'tha, which has five porticoes. ³In these lay a multitude of invalids, blind, lame, paralyzed. ⁵One man was there, who had been ill for thirty-eight years. ⁶When Jesus saw him and knew that he had been lying there a long time, he said to him, "Do you want to be healed?" ⁷The sick man answered him, "Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is troubled, and while I am going another steps down before me." ⁸Jesus said to him, "Rise, take up your pallet, and walk." ⁹And at once the man was healed, and he took up his pallet and walked.

I visited the Holy Land several years ago. Many of the sites we visited, and in particular where the angel spoke to Mary, His baptism, the Sermon on Mount, the wedding at Cana and the site where Jesus instructed Peter to cast his net again, the crucifixion, and the tomb were not the actual sites of the experience. They were the places that second and third century Christians selected as ‘possibly the site.’  Those who might have known had died, and so had any hope of really knowing the exact place.

My first reaction was shock and then bewilderment and loss. I was seeking, through visiting places where Jesus had been, a REAL experience of His presence. I wanted to connect to His life and His compassion. I desperately needed to connect with His reality and truth. I was looking in the past for the validation of the present.

Then we visited the Pool of Bethesda. Finally I was visiting an actual site. Here was reality. There was certainty that this was the Pool at Bethesda  and many had come to be healed. But still I did not find my truth. The pool had no visible water. In fact, where the pool had been was dry, rocky, and over-grown with weeds. It certainly did not look like any pool I had ever seen. I wondered too –if this was the real site where was the evidence of Jesus? Where were the crowds? The healing? The sense of expectation and hope? I saw only dry rocks.

Dry rocks? Where once there was life and hope, there was now only emptiness, and desolation. Dry rocks? If I looked, maybe I would see dry bones too.

I have seen dry bones. And I have seen God put flesh on dry bones as old people had visions and young people dreamed dreams and life was breathed into a dying congregation. I have seen God breathe life into people with new identities, opportunities, community and grace. I have seen God here, now, acting, and visible - both in my life and in the lives of others.

In my search for God in the Holy Land, I discovered that what I expect and what I see does not limit God’s presence- neither in the past nor the present. As I remember my own past, I see my own dry pools and God stirring the waters’ for my healing. I can see the multitude of places where God’s love offered me over and over the opportunity to enter the water, be accepted and hear: this is my child in whom I am well pleased.

Looking for the reality of Jesus in the Holy Land I learned it was not always found in a particular place. Jesus can be found in the experiences of spiritual rebirth, acceptance, following, walking, learning, proclaiming, denying and continuing. All of these ‘sites’ can be seen, and visited within our own stories.

Connecting with the reality of Jesus is a close as our own life. We can be assured of this truth, not only by physical evidence, but by our lived experiences- other’s. We need only to look within ourselves to see the reality which surrounds us all. God’s presence, love and grace is as close as our most recent experience or memory. We only need to look.

Katy Krumbach is a pastor in the North Georgia Annual Conference getting her D.Min. in Spirituality and Leadership.