The Chocolate Gate Scandal: Part V

September 18th, 2006

THE CHOCOLATE GATE SCANDAL: PART V

There are a lot of things within me right now. I keep having this thought: If I was a horse, I’d be dead by now. Seriously, this is a lot to go through. I’ve been reading in the book “This Doesn’t Feel Like Love” and it helps some. It does give perspective on my life and what I’m going though. But the biggest struggle I am dealing with, well two struggles, are anger and lack of faith. I’m not angry at God, mind you. I’m just angry at the not knowing what is wrong. My lack of faith is that I just don’t see an end to all this. My life has become one pain pill after another.

Nehemiah 1:1-4
The words of Nehemiah son of Hacaliah: In the month of Kislev in the twentieth year, while I was in the citadel of Susa, Hanani, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that survived the exile, and also about Jerusalem.

They said to me, “Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.”

When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven.

Nehemiah 1:3 gates:
sha‛ar (noun)

• Gate, gate (of entrance), gate (of space inside gate, i.e. marketplace, public meeting place)


• Gate of city, town


• Gate (of palace, royal castle, temple, court of tabernacle)


• Gate of heaven


• An opening, that is, door or gate: - city, door, gate, port.

Nehemiah 1:3 wall:
chômâh (noun)

• Wall


• Meaning to join; a wall of protection: - wall, walled.

This is how a gate is viewed in the Old Testament. The wall is that of protection, much like a “firewall” for a computer. But a firewall has gates. Only the user allows those gate doors to be opened. And do we not cry and mourn when the computer crashes, when the walls of the hard drive give in and especially identity thieves take whatever information they can? It’s a sad, sad day. Nehemiah, he wept and fasted and prayed for a city he had never been to. Because he heard that it was defenseless. But more than that, without walls and without gates, foreigners can creep in and not only take over the city, but hope, livelihood, and most of all, salvation. Gates let people in. Gates also let people out. Think about that in a figurative sense.

John 5:1-15
Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. 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 and they waited for the moving of the waters. From time to time an angel of the Lord would come down and stir up the waters. The first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be cured of whatever disease he had. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”

“Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”

But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’”

So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?”

The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.

Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.

Colonnade (noun):

• Structure consisting of a row of evenly spaced columns.


• A structure composed of a series of arches supported by columns.

The gate here is used in a term of market, which in this day and age of when Christ was living, the gates usually became marketplaces. Evidently there was pool where near the Sheep Gate (Nehemiah mentions the Sheep Gate three times in that book). This guy, I don’t know why he just didn’t sleep next to the side of this pool and when it was stirred, he just plunk himself right over the side. It sounds logical to me. What I also don’t understand is his lack of gratitude. He gets healed, and the he reports Jesus to the authorities later. What’s up with that? You know, my parents are doing everything they can to help make me better. I seriously don’t know if I am as grateful as I should be to them. I really don’t. How much better am I than that invalid? Seriously, he sat on his duff for thirty-eight years, he got healed, and he still didn’t get it. I pray to God that it doesn’t take me that long. You know what’s weird? People admire me, but I don’t admire myself. It’s probably not healthy. It could be the medicine. The pain-killers are said to cause some depression from what I understand, and the good LORD knows I am taking a few. This is probably not the “feel good” quite time of the year, but at least I’m real with where I’m at. For what it’s worth, thanks for reading. Anyway, Johnny Out.