Make a wish. Wish upon a star. I grant you three wishes. All are lines from my favorite fairy tales.  A wish is exciting. Magical. But there’s something about a wish that seems out of reach. Webster defines a wish as a “a strong desire to have or do something—usually unattainable.”

It’s day five of our 21 Day Experiment. Today, we read about a crippled man with a wish that looked unattainable. He had been an invalid for thirty-eight long years. Life had passed him by.

Jesus noticed the man lying by the pool called Bethesda (which means “site of mercy”). The disabled would often gather around this pool. Rumor had it that people sometimes got healed when they bathed in the water.

“Do you want to get well?”  Jesus asked the man (John 5:6). Seems like an insensitive question to ask a crippled guy at a healing pool who had been desperately trying to get well for thirty-eight years.  Or had he? Continue reading