Plodding or Purposeful - Weekly Reflection 2nd June 2024

 Plodding along or purposefully and carefully walking through the world?

Jesus one day went into the area by the Sheep Gate known as the Pool of Bethesda, a story recorded in John’s Gospel, chapter 5…

‘Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity thirty-eight years.  When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, “Do you want to be made well?”

Jesus saw, noted, and then asked what at a surface level seems a strange question.

Allegedly, there is a sign along an Alaskan highway that reads, "Choose your rut carefully....You'll be in it for the next 150 miles."

Patterns, routine, habits – we all have them.  And they are not a bad thing as they help us navigate our way through the world and can help conserve energy.

A study undertaken some years ago confirmed that very often the routes that we take regularly we often do so without being fully conscious of having done so. ¹ I am sure, like me, you have arrived at a familiar place, maybe arrived home, and you have no clear memory of the journey, you have gone into ‘auto pilot.’  This is a common trait amongst most animals, and humans, to help conserve energy levels.

Do you want to get well? Do you want to live a different way? Do you want to maybe find work and live a different life, Jesus asks this man who had been lying there for nearly four decades. Nearly forty years following the same pattern, habit and routine.

Do you want to live a different way is a very pertinent question to ask those in prison.  That’s the type of question that the Prison Fellowship Sycamore Tree Course asks. ²

And we also do well to ask ourselves those types of questions from time to time.

Have we settled into a life sat by the pool – and maybe, just maybe, become paralysed?  

(Not making any negative comment about those who live with various types of disabilities)

Patterns, routine, habits are not bad in themselves, but we need to check out what are our patterns, routine, habits.

 Are we living as Jesus would want us to? Are we reflecting the life of Jesus in our lives?

In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.  Matthew 5.16

Note carefully, “bring glory to your Father in heaven,” not to you!

I remember some years ago going through a time management exercise. For a week you were asked to log what you were doing at various time throughout the day.  This was then analysed, and it gave an overview of how much time was spent doing various things.

My phone tells me each week how much I have spent doing various things, and that, I can tell you, is sometimes quite alarming.

John Mark Comer in his book ‘Practising the Way’ suggests that we may have lost the idea of what it means to be a disciple and offer instead the idea of becoming an apprentice to Jesus. As an apprentice we embark on a life-long training course, to follow Jesus, to become like Jesus and to do the things that Jesus did. And to cultivate habits that would help us on this journey – ‘until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.’  Ephesians4.11-13

1)      ‘A Geography of the Lifeworld’ – David Seaman 1979

2)      Prison Fellowship – Sycamore Tree Sycamore Tree -Prison Fellowship