John 5:7-11: in context

By the pool of Bethesda, where the sick waited for the water to be stirred, believing the first one in would be healed, lies a man who has been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus asks if he wants to be healed, the man explains his hopeless situation: I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred; while I am making my way, someone else steps down before me. Jesus does not carry him to the pool. He simply says, get up, take up your mat, and walk, and at once the man is healed and walks, carrying his mat, on the Sabbath, which stirs up a controversy.

The man's whole hope had been fixed on a pool he could never reach in time. For thirty-eight years his problem had a cruel shape: healing was supposedly available, but he had no one to help him get to it, and someone stronger always got there first. His answer to Jesus is not really an answer but a lament of helplessness: I have no one. And Jesus bypasses the entire system. He does not fix the man's access to the pool, does not find him a helper, does not put him in the water; he heals him directly with a word. The pool was never the point. The man had been waiting on a mechanism, a stirring of water, a race he could not win, and Jesus shows he needs none of it; the Lord who made him can simply speak him whole. There is comfort here for anyone whose hope has been pinned on a means they cannot reach, a help that never comes, a door that always closes just before them. Jesus is not limited to the channels we have been counting on. The man had no one to help him into the pool, and it turned out he did not need the pool; he needed the one who stood in front of him and said, rise.

Where has my hope been pinned on a means I cannot reach or a help that never comes, and can I turn to the one who does not need the pool, who can simply say, rise?