Another beautiful part of my health journey is a dear woman, Hilary, who teaches Holy Yoga two mornings per week. After spending a few weeks in a traditional yoga class, complete with buddhas and chanting, I discovered this sweet lady teaching yoga with a slightly different mind-set. With a back-drop of intensity appropriate worship music, Hilary guides us through yoga poses that require focused breathing, balance, and strength, interspersed with Scripture and prayer. It is an amazing time of full-body worship, and I LOVE it!
Today, on a Monday no less, I woke up at 6:14 with just 16 minutes to dress and fly to yoga class. I ran in quite flustered, but Hilary quickly quieted us all and led us through a wonderfully intense, sweaty series of moves that left me feeling fully alive and powerful. During the cool-down time of relaxation at the end of the teaching, Hilary read the story (see below) in John 5 about the healing at the pool, when Jesus saw a disabled man who couldn't make it into the healing waters on his own. Jesus simply said to him, "You're healed. Take up your mat and walk."
As I lay there, eyes closed, feeling my tired body relax into my own mat, I had a vision of the man jumping up and pushing his way to the pool to get in and be healed. Crazy, right? Jesus had just healed him. He was fully, totally, completely, utterly healed. How nuts would he have been to then use that power he'd been given to push past all those people to immerse himself in that pool?
Yet, I realized that is what I constantly find myself doing. Rather than simply accepting that I am completely healed, totally forgiven, fully accepted, utterly loved, I continue to believe I have to use God's power to heal myself. Seeing that now in writing, I can't believe how ridiculous it sounds.
How different would my life be if I chose to believe I am already 100% healed rather than begging God for the strength to heal myself? What if I chose to live out of God's strength instead of my own? What if I saw everyone else the same way...fully healed? Hmmmmm?
The Healing at the Pool
5 Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. 2 Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda[a]and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. 3 Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. [4] [b] 5 One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”
7 “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.”
8 Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” 9 At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
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