Hopelessness has to be one of the worst experiences of life.

Yesterday I preached from the fifth chapter of John concerning the paralyzed man at the pool of Bethesda.

The Pool at Bethesda contained scores of people experiencing hopeless situations. The blind, lame, and withered away waited at the pool for some chance at hope.

You can imagine how it must have looked. Healthy Jews would never have been associated with that place. They saw physical hurt as the punishment for human sin.

That meant that only the hurting and hopeless in Jewish society would have been present.

Jesus deliberately went to the pool and deliberately picked out a man to help.

He asked the question that doesn’t make any sense: “Do you want to be healed?” The man, beaten down by his pain and hopelessness, simply offered excuses.”Sir, I have no man to help me into the water.”

Those are haunting words: “I have no man.”

Jesus came to offer hope. Paul described Gentiles as people “without hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). What a tragic place to be and what a sad way to live.

When I give my testimony I couch it in two ways. First, because of Christ I’ve never been alone. God came into my life and I’ve known ever sense that He was with me and would always be there for me.

Second, since Christ came into my life I have always lived with hope. As long as there is God, there is hope. The story of the paralyzed man at the Pool of Bethesda shows us the power of God at work in our lives.

He gives hope to the hopeless, and He gives Himself to those who are alone.

No wonder the story of Jesus spread like a tsunami over the Mediterranean world.

The needs for hope and companionship are just as evident in our day as they were then.

Let us be the people who share hope with those hurting and without hope.

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