Life happens. We may not like what happens or how it happens. Our own choices, or the choices of others, create consequences. What happens may simply be an inconvenience or one of a multitude of irritations that can scrape at us – nothing really of a serious nature, but it is still irksome, irritating, a ruffler of our own sense that someone should do life differently, or refrain from putting expectations on us. Kinda like when it’s time for your preschooler to put his toys away or stop running in the house. Or maybe it’s unending, repetitive traffic delays or the wait in the doctor’s office. But life can “happen” in far more impacting ways that heap loss upon loss, inequality upon inequality, chaos upon confusion. We read about the blind man sitting at the side of the road, and we focus on the narrative happening at a set point in time. But this was the infant who nursed at his mother’s breast but he could not see her face. He could follow her voice and her touch, and he learned smells and sounds, but he gained only a vague sense of his surroundings because he could not see. His handicap would have demanded much from his parents as they sought to protect him and then enable him to somehow, some way care for himself as he grew older. And in caring for himself, we find him begging at the side of the road, pitied by some, avoided by most, superstitiously blasphemed by still others – just as he had been all his life since he started to toddle. Even Jesus’ disciples question it all. Why was this man born blind? Was it because of his own sins or his parents’ sins?
Jesus is quick to give reason for the tragedy. We don’t always know the “why” when life happens. And we may never know the specifics, but we can know God has not been taken by surprise, He has not lost control, He may or may not have intentionally planned the happenings, but we do know whatever happens, He has allowed it, and He will step into it, meet us in the middle of the muck, and He has the capability to do what God and God alone can do. Jesus answers the disciples. It was not because of his sins or his parents’ sins. This happened so the power of God could be seen in him. The blind toddler, the overlooked young child, the bullied teenager, the avoided beggar at the side of the road. God had a purpose in it all. God knew when Jesus would be walking by.
And then, Jesus spit on the ground, made mud with the saliva, and spread the mud over the blind man’s eyes. It’s at this point in the happenings of our lives, we may find ourselves with still more questions for God. God, really??? You know life really hasn’t been too easy lately. I’ve been doing the best I can, but mud-slinging??? Why, God, why??? The blind man may have had an awareness of the supposed medicinal value of saliva, but making mud out of it and putting it on his eyes? And yet the man who still has known only blindness continues to respond to Jesus who sends him on a walk, and still a dark one at that. Jesus told him, Go wash yourself in the pool of Siloam.. So the man went and washed – and came back seeing! A muddy transformation, but God accomplished what only God could do.
Sometimes we question, balk, become angry, or even give up on God, when we don’t like how God is letting things work out in our lives. Sometimes we feel the “cure” is worse than the “happening.” But sometimes, we need to do what the blind man did, and keep on responding to God. It may well seem to be a muddy transformation, but God is present, and God is at work.
– Bev
(Related Bible reading: John 9:1-11)
