I was 27.
Newly married.
No children yet.
Standing at the edge of something I didn’t understand.
That was 38 years ago.
This week, I returned to an old passage in the Gospel of John — one I’ve read before —
but this time, it spoke directly to me.
“Do you want to be well?”
The man by the pool had been ill for 38 years.
He wasn’t seeking attention. He wasn’t shouting.
He was simply… there.
Still. Waiting. Watching the water move.
Jesus doesn’t scold him.
Doesn’t explain anything.
He asks a single question:
“Do you want to be well?”
I heard it for myself this time —
as clearly as if it had been said aloud.
It wasn’t about physical healing.
It wasn’t about regret or blame.
It was about readiness.
It was about now.
I’ve spent years near that spiritual pool —
trying, waiting, listening.
Doing my best to serve and to search.
But something shifts with that question.
It implies choice.
It implies courage.
Are you willing to become someone new?
Are you ready to rise?
For me, this isn’t a return to who I was at 27.
It’s a response to what has been formed in the years since.
The years have not been wasted.
They’ve been part of the consecration.
And now I see that the deeper work is only just beginning.
“Do you want to be well?”
I think I do.
And I think, at last, I’m ready to walk.