If you are looking for healing, take heart. Jesus is listening and in his perfect time, he’ll answer and not pass you by.
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SHAUNA: Hi, I'm Shauna on Joni Eareckson Tada: Sharing Hope. There’s an old hymn Joni always sings as a prayer, and here she is singing it for us now:
(Joni sings:)
Pass me not, O gentle Savior
Hear my humble cry
While on others thou are calling
Please do not pass me by
Savior, Oh my Savior
Please hear my humble cry
While on others thou are calling
Jesus, do not pass me by
Oh, I can’t tell you how many times I used to sing this as a prayer when I was first injured and in the hospital. This is how the hymn would connect: I would picture that passage in John 5 where the disabled people came to the pool of Bethesda to be healed. I imagined myself among the many that day when Jesus entered the pool area. I pictured the five covered colonnades crowded with people who had diseases and disabilities. I felt the dry, dusty air. I envisioned Jesus – ‘Oh, there he is’ – walking among the others, healing them, and touching them, and from my corner, up against the wall where I was leaning, I’d picture myself pleading, “Oh, Jesus, oh Jesus, do not pass me by!” I would see myself on a straw mat, Jesus approaching, his eyes meeting mine, him sensing my desperation, stepping over others to kneel by me, reaching down, touching my cheek and saying, “Yes! Daughter, be healed.” Oh, my goodness, the power of that image could even cause a muscle spasm back then. I would quickly open my eyes, see my hospital room, strain to rise from my bed, but my poor legs and hands never got the message. Back then it felt as though Jesus had passed me by. That he forgot me.
Decades later there was the chance for me and my husband to visit Israel. One morning we entered the old city of Jerusalem. We turned a cobblestone corner and, “Look, Ken, here’s the ruins, the pool of Bethesda. Here are the ruins of the colonnades. Here are the steps leading down to the water.” Sitting behind the guardrail, looking over the ruins, in my mind’s eye I could picture hundreds of sick and paralyzed people. And I turned to Ken with tears in my eyes and said, “Oh sweetheart, you would not believe how many times I used to picture myself here when I was in the hospital.” I scanned the ruins and whispered, “And now, after so many, many years, I’m here, I’m here at the pool of Bethesda.”
Tears welled in my eyes that day because I said, “I made it, I made it.” Jesus did not pass me by. He did not overlook me. He answered my prayer: He said ‘no’ to a request for physical healing. And I’m so glad because a ‘no’ answer from God about walking has deepened my faith, purged sin from my life. And being in this wheelchair has meant knowing Jesus better; feeling his strength every day.
Friend, if you are looking for healing, take heart. Jesus is listening and in his perfect time, he’ll answer and not pass you by.
© Joni and Friends