Take up your pen and walk

“Take up your pen and walk”

When I was writing something yesterday, those words stood out, and hung heavy in the air. I’m not going to say I came up with the beautiful phrase. It was something, hovering, and I just caught it.

I was writing about purpose, and walking in yours. (Again, as is the themes it seems. What can I say, the world needs YOU🤍🙏🏻💪🏻.)

Yet the “pen” wasn’t only about a pen. Sure, I use one to write a lot of words. But you write too. Even if you don’t think that you “write”.

You write with every spoken words. With every embrace. With every turn of your head, every glance of your eyes, you tell a story.

What is your story?

Well, what was once your bed? What maybe still kinda is? What’s hurt you or held you back or been a source of shame or limitations? It’s not meant to stay that way.

It’s meant to be your pen.

“Pick up your pen and walk” holds an echo. Of this story 👇🏻

“Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 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?”

“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.”
Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.”
At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.”

Now there is so much here. It is ripe for the picking. But the main point for now is this:
The man was sick for 38 years. He had no one to help him get well.
Jesus just had to speak to him, to tell him to pick up his bed and walk. And he was healed.

Some of you have been sick for thirty eight years. And you have no way, no one to help you to get to the pool and get well.

The man sat under five columns (5 often stands for government or worldly structures). We put so much in these broken systems, the ones that are failing us, at every turn, when what we really need is an encounter with Jesus.

The One who makes His sick friends well. Who holds the world in the palm of His hand.

Here’s the best part. The man didn’t even know it was Jesus at first. He was blind and lame. He didn’t have to see physically to understand that those words, His words, held weight. When he heard them, he felt them. He felt something different. He didn’t have to understand how it would even work in order to accept the words.

The life giving words.

He just had to do what He said.

That was the day of the man’s healing.

There are lots of different types of healing that we need in this world. What’s yours, what’s the one you need today?

Blind as you may be, hurt as you may be, reach out for Him. You can get to know Him more later. But you can still always hear His words and reach out for Him now.

In your hurt and sickness and blindness, you can still “find” Him, for He is near. And He will reach right back out for you.
He will heal you, as you need it, He wil tell you, to pick up your bed and walk.

“The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.” But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’” So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?” The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.”

No one has to like it. They probably won’t. The broken system of laws and rules and religion government that kept you sick? Leave it behind. Be well, now. When you hear Him say it. Listen for His words. Ask Him for it.

That is what the Father is doing. THAT is what Jesus is up to. Already, and ongoing, and it can be yours.

I don’t know how it will happen. I don’t know when. But I do know that He holds the words of life. We don’t have to know it all yet. We just have to ask Him.

What was once was your bed can now be your story.
The pen with which you write a better one.

A redeemed story- of hope and love and healing.
No longer sick, but well.
No longer blind and lame, but healed and whole.

He, in His Love, always tells a better story. He can tell it in and through your life, too. Let Him…