The certainty of God’s presence and power is vividly conveyed in the Bible account of the healing of the man at the pool of Bethesda. John’s Gospel tells us that this man, who had had an infirmity for 38 years, was lying on a bed by the pool when Christ Jesus noticed him. To most onlookers, his case must have seemed hopeless, but Jesus was unimpressed by how long he had been in that condition. With spiritual authority, he told the man to “rise, take up thy bed, and walk.” And, as St. John relates, “Immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked” (see chap. 5).
Understanding that God is all-powerful and totally good, Jesus healed the man with certainty, despite what looked like high odds against healing. The master Christian conceded no power to the so-called law of probability.
The theory of probability, which predicts the likelihood that some event will take place, given what has happened previously, is based on the belief that the universe is governed by chance. This theory is so widely accepted that it has come to be regarded as a law that has dominion in our lives. The media often discuss the “odds”—the percentage of chance—that some adversity or health problem will take place today because it has already taken place in particular ways in the past. But calculations based on false law stand in stark contrast to the certainty of God’s ever-present power and man’s inseparable relation to God as exemplified by Jesus.
