Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

I'm Kirsten Holmberg, and I titled our reading, Hope of Healing.

A new cause for hope as emerged for people paralyzed by spinal cord injuries.

German researchers have discovered a way to stimulate nerve growth to reconnect the neural

pathways between the muscles and the brain.

The regrowth has enabled paralyzed mice to walk again, and testing will continue to determine whether the therapy is

safe and effective for humans. What science seeks to achieve on behalf of those who suffer

paralysis, Jesus did through miracles. When he visited the pool at Bethesda, a place where many who ailed lingered in hopes of healing,

Jesus sought out a man among them who had been an invalid for 38 years.

After confirming that the man did indeed wish to be healed, Christ instructed him to stand up and walk.

At once the man was cured, he picked up his mat and walked.

We're not promised that all our physical ailments will be healed by God.

There were others at the pool who weren't healed by Jesus that day.

But those who put their trust in him can experience the healing he brings,

from despair to hope, bitterness to grace, hatred to love, accusation to a willingness to forgive.

No scientific discovery or pool of water can offer us such healing. It only comes by faith.

Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from John, chapter 5 verses 1 through 9.

Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals.

Now there is in Jerusalem near the sheep gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda,

and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades.

Here, a great number of disabled people used to lie, the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.

One who was there had been an invalid for 38 years.

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