Service on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/100064617886792/videos/833707543025432
I think I say this every time a story like this comes up, healing stories are sometimes hard. Because sometimes like the official, we use every resource available to us, we work every system, we pray for healing our bodies, in the bodies of ones we love. And sometimes we don’t receive the miracle. We don’t see the signs. And so we don’t see any hope.
The persons healed in our story today, they will grow, maybe even grow old, and someday, for some reason, their bodies will fail them, they will die. Who knows how many people were at the pool that day that Jesus didn’t heal.
No one in Bible study liked the idea that the man had been by the pool for 38 years, that maybe he had been there a much shorter time. Regardless, he had come to this pool with no other options, this was a last resort, and this was the system he had hoped would save him. And it did not. It matters how if you see the Jesus’ question as one of compassion or accusation; and if the man is giving excuses and offering an explanation out of his deep hopelessness, out of the inability to see anything beyond the moment the water is stirred and he just can’t make it.
There are many ways we could hold these 2 men and the healing they experience in contrast with each other, and that’s probably why they are right next to each other. But what I think is true for both of them is that the system has failed them, the ways to access healing have failed. No matter the resources or connections the official had, he could not bring healing to his son. And the man at the pool seems to have no other option than to wait and hope he could be the one to make to healing one day, and it never came.
Jesus thwarted the way things could have gone. Jesus should have gone to the official’s house and healed his son. He could have helped the man into the pool. But he did neither. The official trusted Jesus before he knew there was healing and recognized the healing came from Jesus in community with those of his household–when they could all discuss and discern what they had each experienced. And the man at the pool was given healing without explanation, without belief, without knowing Jesus or anything about him.
What was true for both of them was their desperation and hope. There was still hope in each of them for the world to be different than it currently was.
The late Tony Campolo, whose ministry was evangelical, focused on the teachings of Jesus–the words some Bibles put as red letters, and justice and compassion. If he were alive today, he would probably be infuriated about the Christian opposition to empathy and getting arrested at the capital.
He, like so many others, published stories of his ministry. In his 2000 book, Let Me Tell You a Story, he starts by talking about a church conference he had attended in South Africa.
The other speaker was one of the founders of the movement often referred to as the Toronto Blessing. This is a movement that very much believes in a theology of signs and wonders. Those engaged in this ministry contend that miracles are part of the witness that we should have to an unbelieving world as we try to win people to Christ.
This particular evangelist was very respectful of me, even though miracles were not any part of my ministry. When he asked if Tony was into healing people, Tony explained to him that when he’s with people who are sick, he always pray for them to be healed, but to be perfectly honest, he hadn’t ever seen anything spectacular happen. His friend jokingly reminded Tony that not seeing anything spectacular happen hadn’t deterred me from being a preacher. And they both laughed, even as he affirmed that the ministry of Christ was to preach, to teach, and to heal, and that all three of those things should be part of what we do in our everyday service for the Kingdom.
The next week Tony was back in the States and preaching at a church in Oregon. On impulse, as he ended the service saying to the congregation that if anyone wanted to remain behind for healing, Tony would be glad to pray with them. He told them “You shouldn’t expect much to happen, because nothing much happens when I pray, but if they wanted to give it a try, I’d be willing to pray as hard as I could.” Surprisingly, about thirty people stayed behind and waited patiently as he prayed for one after the other.
Tony did not want to do this healing thing fast, like some of the healers on television. He wanted to really talk to a person before he prayed and get a feel for what was on that person’s heart. He wanted to hug each person and connect with him or her as deeply as he knew how. Tony did that with each of the people who stayed behind, and in each case he put some olive oil on each of their heads. It took him more than an hour to pray through that little group. But he did it! What intrigued him was that most of the people who had come for healing had nothing physically wrong with them. One man needed healing for an addiction to pornography. One woman wanted healing for her marriage. Someone else asked healing for anger. But there were a few who did have physical illnesses.
Four days later he got a telephone call, and the woman at the other end said, “Tony, on Sunday you prayed for my husband. He had cancer.”
When he heard the word “had” my heart quickened a bit. “Had cancer?” he asked.
The woman answered, “Well, he’s dead now.”
When she said that Tony thought, “A lot of good I do.”
Then the woman said, “You don’t understand. When my husband and I walked into that church on Sunday, he was angry with God. He had cancer and he knew he was going to be dead soon, and he hated God for letting it happen. He wanted to see his grandchildren grow up more than anything. At night he would lie in bed and curse God. It was horrible. And the angrier he got toward God, the meaner he was to everyone around him. It was unbearable to be in the same room with him. His nastiness just kept getting worse and worse and worse. But then you laid hands on him on Sunday morning and you prayed for him. When he walked out of church I knew there was something different. I could feel it. He was a different person. The last four days of our lives have been the best four days we’ve ever had together. We talked and laughed. We even sang hymns with each other. It was a good, good time.”
She paused, then added something really profound. She said, “Tony, he wasn’t cured, but he was healed.” As Tony hung up the phone, he could still hear her last words echoing in his ears and making their way down to his heart… “He wasn’t cured. He was healed.” Tony Campolo would later say that he learned a lot about the Holy Spirit that day.
We are desperate to be made whole, to be healed, to have cancers and pain and illnesses just vanish, because I believe God is bigger than anything I can see or know, and because I would never dissuade anyone else’s stories of miraculous healings, I can’t prove they don’t happen. But there are sign. There are years of life for a grandma with cancer that would usually take someone in months. There are medications that cost thousands per dose that somehow are made affordable.
When one mother was taken by ICE, another stepped in to donate breastmilk https://19thnews.org/2026/02/minneapolis-ice-mother-donate-breastmilk/
Moms in Minneapolis are donating diapers, food and time to help families who have been ripped apart by ICE.–Chabeli Carrazana
February 2, 2026, 12:39 p.m. CT
A newborn in Minneapolis hadn’t eaten for a day and a half.
Her mother had risked going into work to get just enough money for more diapers when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents stopped her car and took her away. At home waiting for her were her 16-year-old daughter and the baby — just barely 3 months old.
With their mother gone, the teenager tried to feed the baby, who was exclusively breastfed, formula to no avail. So they called Bri.
For over a month and a half now, Bri, a mother of two in Minneapolis, has run an expansive donation network in the city, most of it to help other moms and families with children. Bri, who is breastfeeding her own infant, posted on her social media that in addition to groceries and diapers and wipes, she could also donate breastmilk to anyone who needed it.
Bri is an overproducer — in one morning, she might pump 45 ounces alone. When the call came on January 17, Bri had pumped about a thousand ounces of extra breastmilk, which was stored in her freezer. She knew it was likely a matter of time before she’d hear of a baby in need.
An hour and a half after she received the call, Bri was at the family’s doorstep with 350 ounces of milk in a cooler, along with a care package that included instructions on how to safely thaw the milk, a bottle warmer, bottles and some extra clothes that no longer fit her then-6-month-old.
Inside, the baby was screaming.
They quickly put together a bottle and watched as the child’s body relaxed. The baby drank the whole bottle and fell asleep.
Bri wept.
Then the rage set in.
“I felt very angry — very, very, angry, and I couldn’t imagine what the 16-year-old was feeling because she felt broken. Her mom was her world … and now they’re separated,’” Bri said. “There are moms that are literally being torn apart from their kids.”
In Minneapolis, for every story detailing the fallout of the federal crackdown, there are as many stories of people like Bri. Neighbors are putting their trust in total strangers. Moms are helping children who are not their own, who they’ve never met.
For almost two months now, Bri has spent her mornings and afternoons, before and after work, picking up donations for immigrant families in hiding from ICE. Bri requested that The 19th only share her first name and omit the names of the children out of concern for her safety and that of the families she aids.
At night, after her baby is down to sleep and under the care of Bri’s 18-year-old daughter, she delivers supplies until about 10 p.m. What started as a couple donations has quickly swelled into a network, with donations flooding in every week. Most of it is moms talking to one another and putting together packages, while Bri manages what comes in and posts about it on her social media, trying to match donations with families’ needs. Professionally, Bri’s job also involves connecting people with resources, so the community already knows to come to her.
Much of her focus in recent weeks has been putting together donations of diapers, wipes and formula for mothers who are staying home to avoid ICE.
“The first line that a lot of these moms say when they call is, ‘I’ve never asked for help and the only reason why I’m asking for help is because I love my kids,’” Bri said. In response she’ll tell them in Spanish: Vergüenza robar — no pedir. Or roughly, ”Shame on those who steal, not those who ask for help.”
In a world built on systems of power, resources, and violence; in a world whose signs point toward taking, destruction, and death; there has to be hope in another way, in another way of living, in another way of being in community. Jesus calls the man to not fall into sin and I don’t think he’s saying don’t do anything wrong because… join us next week! but rather is saying don’t participate in the ways of empire, the darkness of that cannot see, recognize, or understand the light.
Then maybe we will see the signs. Maybe we can find hope. Maybe we can live in that light. Maybe we can be part of the signs, the hope, the light that point to God in this world by bringing love, hope, and life abundant to all. We can’t lose hope.