Photo Courtesy of Damiano Rossi
The state, station, and condition of the African American is one that is cause for significant concern. The 21st Century finds many of our families mismanaged, our women mistreated, our men misrepresented, and our children misunderstood. Our brothers and sisters have adopted a distrust for one another, our focus on individual riches has hindered our sense of collective wealth, and the pictures that others paint of us are rapidly becoming viewed as more fact than fiction. The reality that may be difficult for us to swallow is that our culture is one that is in decline and in drastic need of repair. What should be of even greater concern for our race is how distant and unrealistic we perceive our repair to be. We have all but been convinced that in an age with more resources, information, and opportunity than perhaps any other time in American history, our united breakthrough is impossible.
In the midst of these troubling times, these circumstances, what possibly could God be saying to us? What instruction could He possibly have for a race of blessed people crippled by complacency? His instruction to us is found in the Biblical narrative of John 5. The story tells of a man sickened with paralysis. For 38 years, this man would make his way to the Pool of Bethesda in search of his healing. The man, after years and years of waiting for his healing and restoration meets Jesus and is finally met with his opportunity to move past his current condition. When Jesus asks the man if he wants to be well, the man gives reason after reason why he cannot. The man tells Jesus how he cannot possibly be made well because he has no one to help him and how every time he tries to help himself, someone else is in front of him. Despite these impediments, Jesus gives the man a firm directive: Get Up! His response implies that the key to the man’s situation becoming better has nothing to do with the circumstances that may be in his way. He plainly tells the man the way to make his life better has to start with him having the faith to not allow the things in his way to keep him from standing as he was created to.
The paralyzed mentality of the man in the text is the same as what restricts many of our people today. It is one thing to be paralyzed by our problems, but another thing to allow that paralysis to corrupt our consciousness and lower our standard of living. And despite the mountainous tribulation we all may face, what is this message that God has for our people? Despite things that get in our way and are created to stand against us; the things that may have tricked us into thinking that our victory is improbable and our interferences impassible, God is telling all of us, to get up. To the brothers who struggle against a system intent on their invalidation, God is saying “Get Up!” To the sisters who not only have to deal with the reality of racism, but also the shallowness of sexism, God has only one directive, “Get Up!” For our youth who have to face the acherontic actuality of violence, self hatred, and bitterness, God has only one directive: “Get Up!”
Contrary to the conditions we all face daily, God is trying to tell us that our success, our healing, our deliverance and our restoration are not matters of need but matters of nerve. He is saying to you and I that all we need to do to change our lives is change our lives. We must choose to live in the way He has called us to and that life starts with us raising up from the mediocre, muddled lives we have resided in for far too long. It is time for us to live above the blessing line of God and exercise the power over our problems that we have always had. As we all look to God for conclusions to our complications, God, through His Son, is giving us an answer that we all must hear and heed. God is saying to His children, “My People, Get Up!”