A Year with Jesus

Note from Jesus

Dear Seeker of Truth,

I was frustrated with the religious leaders who added their own regulations to the commandments of the law and made those regulations more important than caring for a woman who had been bound by a crippled body for 18 years (Luke 13:10-17). As you read the verses below, notice how My disciples come close to doing the same thing with a man who was blind. Rather than recognizing the difficulty of being blind and then caring for the blind man, My disciples asked an insensitive religious question about him within his hearing:

Teacher, who sinned? Who is responsible for this man's blindness? Did he commit sins that merited this punishment? If not his sins, is it the sins of his parents?

My disciples did not view this man who had been blind since birth as someone in whom the deeds of God's grace needed to be displayed. Instead, they used him as the pretext for a religious discussion. To them, the man and his problems were nothing more than a religious question - a question that cost them nothing. They spent no time ministering to his needs, caring for him as a child of God in need, or compassionately visiting with the man. He was just the object of their religious conversation. Anything that you do to objectify another person and treat that person as less than someone created in Our image is dehumanizing. No one should be reduced to little more than a topic of religious conversation between people who have no real interest in providing help.

You are placed into your circle of relationships to make a difference in the lives of the people around you. Listen to the conversations around you. Ask the Spirit to open your eyes to see the "blind men" that other people around you miss, objectify, or turn into nothing more than a matter for discussion. Look for ways to demonstrate My love and grace by serving these people.

Verses to Live

The following verses begin a series of events that involved My healing a man who was born blind and then proceed to the things that occurred as a result of that healing. We will address more aspects of these events later. Today, notice how I treat this man as someone in whom "the deeds of God may be put on display," yet nearly all the people he meets treat him as less than a person created in the image of God.

While walking along the road, Jesus saw a man who was blind since his birth.

Disciples:
Teacher, who sinned? Who is responsible for this man's blindness? Did he commit sins that merited this punishment? If not his sins, is it the sins of his parents?
Jesus:
Neither. His blindness cannot be explained or traced to any particular person's sins. He is blind so the deeds of God may be put on display. While it is daytime, we must do the works of the One Who sent Me. But when the sun sets and night falls, this work is impossible. Whenever I am in the world, I am the Light of the world.
After He said these things, He spat on the ground and mixed saliva and dirt to form mud, which He smeared across the blind man's eyes.

Jesus (to the blind man):
Go, wash yourself in the pool of Siloam.
Siloam means "sent," and its name reminded us that his healing was sent by God. The man went, washed, and returned to Jesus, his eyes now alive with sight. Then neighbors and others who knew him were confused to see a man so closely resembling the blind beggar running about.

Townspeople:
Isn't this the man we see every day sitting and begging in the streets?
Others:
This is the same man.
Still Others:
This cannot be him. But this fellow bears an uncanny resemblance to the blind man.
Formerly Blind Man:
I am the same man. It's me!
Townspeople:
How have your lifeless eyes been opened?
Formerly Blind Man:
A man named Jesus approached me and made mud from the ground and applied it to my eyes. He then said to me, "Go, wash yourself in the pool of Siloam." I went and washed, and suddenly I could see.
Townspeople:
Where is this man Who healed you?
Formerly Blind Man:
I don't know.
(John 9:1-12)

Response in Prayer

O God, help me see the people that You place in my path each day - the very people that You placed there so that I can share Your grace with them. Forgive me when I have treated others as little more than a religious or political or social question and have not heard Your call to love them into Your family. Open my eyes and my heart to see the people others neglect and ignore. Please use me to give them hope and to share a touch of Your grace with them. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen.