"5 After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. 3 In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralysed. 5 One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” 7 The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.” 8 Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.”9 And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.
Now that day was the Sabbath."
John 5:1-9
There is something terribly pathetic about the man's reply to Jesus in 7, 'Sir, I have no man...', because they underline the essential loneliness of the life of need and the life of sin. Ultimately, it was not a man that he needed, but a God, and it was a Saviour God that met him that day; but what he said bears a disturbing challenge to our hearts as Christian people. There are many needy people in the world today who speak as this man did - they also have no man, for the world passes them by in their need and misery, caring little and brushing aside their plaintive appeals for help. But ought Christian people to do likewise? Is there not a ministry here for those sensitive enough to discern the needs of men? Were there no other people at Bethesda who could have helped the man? The truth is that there are always some around that could help, if they had the will to. And that is where we come in, as servants of Christ. We must not only have the will, but also the compassion, to stretch out a hand of help. If we are too busy with other things to notice need and to offer help, then we are too busy, and we need to make an urgent reappraisal of our priorities, to bring our lives into conformity with the compassion of Christ. Let us allow this word 'I have no man' ring in our ears today as we go about our business, and let us allow it to ask us whether, in one needy circumstance or another, God might not mean us to be that man who will help at a critical time.