The Bethesda Boy

If you knew how many days, weeks, months and year;
How many people, with their friends, who made it into the pool.
How the bottom falls out of your guts,
every time you realise you've missed out again.

Bethesda, just up the road from the Sheep Gate,
the House of grace, pity, mercy -but only, it seems, if you've got friends.
All I needed was a friend - one would do.
Then up comes this bloke who asks, 'Do you want to be well?'
I ask you, is the Chief Priest a Jew?

'Sir,' says I, 'That's what I'm here for,
Been waiting thirty-eight years for
(used to call me the 'Bethesda Boy' when I started you know).
what do you reckon?'

'Best get up, roll up your mat and walk then,' he says.
And you know what? That's what I did - got up, rolled it up and went home,
Walking on my own two feet for the first time, ever.
And as I did, you wouldn't credit it, but I got stopped by the religious police!
It was the Sabbath you see - against the law to work - and that's what carrying your mat was.
I hadn't been cured for more than five minutes and I get done for 'working on the Sabbath!'

So I tells them me story, about how the bloke what healed me told me to do it.
'What man? Who is he, and where is he now?' they ask me.
But I didn't know who he was nor where he'd gone - he was just a bloke.
And they let me go with a warning as it was me first time;
Think they missed the point a bit myself.

But being the Sabbath, I take myself off to the temple and who do you think I bump into?
Yes, you're right - it's the bloke that healed me - Jesus, it's Jesus,
The rabbi people have been teaching about!
And he says to me, 'Now you're well stop sinning or next time . . . ,'
But there ain't going to be a next time - I'm gonna live right with God from now on.
And then I pop back to tell them I've found out who healed me,
Told them it was Jesus - and they didn't look too pleaded
So I chucked the mat and legged it - after all, I could, couldn't I?

John 5. 1 - 15