miracle 2
 I wonder if you are the kind of person who often feels left out. Remember those days at school when they picked teams. You were the one that was left to the end, the one that made up the numbers. There is a great Mastercard advert. If any advert for a bank is good I think this is it. The scene is the backstreets of an Italian city. The boy who is not really any good at football is trying to impress. He breaks a flowerpot - €10. He breaks a window pane - €75. The ball hits him in the face and everyone laughs. He breaks a car headlight - €100. And then finally he is the hero as he scores the winning goal – priceless! And then in his celebration he knocks over another flowerpot. I think that the person who came up with that scenario knew what it was to be the forgotten one and could express the longing of that individual for recognition.
Imagine what it would have been like to lie on a mat beside the Pool of Bethesda for 38 years amongst the suffering and stench, alongside the broken dreams and helplessness. For this man there was no one watching out for him. The superstition was that an angel would come every now and then and would trouble the water. First person into the water would be healed. He knew that that moment would never arrive for him. He was the forgotten one, he was left out, no one cared – until one day.
You can read the story in John chapter 5. There he was lying, this day that was like all the others, with its noise and bustle, shouting and swearing, when he is aware of someone talking to him. "Do you want to get well?" "Sir," the invalid replied, "I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me." Then Jesus said to him, "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk."
At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. When he is later interrogated by the religious leaders, because he had been healed on the day that no work should be done, he had no idea who had healed him because Jesus had slipped away into the crowd.
That man that nobody cared for had been seen by Jesus and set free from his suffering. Way back when I was but a struggling teacher in London, going nowhere and definitely lost; Jesus saw me, reached down and touched me and saved my life. He can do the same for you.
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