Article August 2, 1930 Issue

The Upward Look

JOSEPH G. ALDEN

"THE impotent man" whose sad condition and amazing faith claimed Jesus' attention at the pool of Bethesda had been making the same mistake which most mortals have been making since the beginning of time. He had heard that if one afflicted with a disease could be first to go down into the pool when it was troubled a positive healing would result. For thirty-eight long years, the record runs, he had lain at the side of the pool, hoping that his turn would come, and that by someone's aid he would get into the water at the right moment and so be healed of his affliction.

One can imagine how such a case aroused the compassion of the Master, who never failed to be interested in an individual the quality of whose faith, even if misdirected, was tenacious, as was this man's. Jesus' incisive questions uncovered both the man's great faith and the cause of his failure to receive a healing. He had been expecting to be healed by going down into the water; but healing was to come to him by an ascending, not a descending experience. He was looking down, when he should have been looking up. He was to learn that a downward look into matter could never bring him deliverance, but that an upward look into Spirit, by the way of rightly directed faith, could bring him instantaneous healing.

The Bible records other instances of misplaced faith, and present-day human experience teems with similar instances. True faith is a transcendent quality based on Spirit. The hope of the one lying by the pool, confidently expecting that some day one would come and assist him in reaching the water before another stepped in, illustrated mistaken faith. But how suddenly tired expectation was changed into realization when the wisdom of the Master turned the impotent one's faith in a new direction and gave it an upward look! Then once again was proved to the Master, and for the first time to the enslaved invalid, that faith merging into understanding bursts the bonds of material belief, however long they have seemed to fetter thought.

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The Power of God
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