Do you want to Argue or Heal? John 9

We usually don't get to know all the causes of what befalls us. Is it God? Was it us? Was it just the world and other people? Was it the enemy? Or some combination of all? We rarely have clarity on those answers. Sometimes storms just come. Sometimes God is driving and using that storm for a purpose. Often, we're partially at fault and if we could peek behind the scenes, the enemy is pulling levers, too.

While we cannot know the reasons, we are responsible for what comes next. How we react is entirely on us, and it matters. I think that Jesus' comments in John 9 are compelling. This is where His disciples ask whether it's this man's sins, or the sins of his parents, that caused him to be born blind? Jesus heals him and says that it's neither! This again is a passage where we completely miss His point, and usually wonder how the Pharisees can be so blind when Jesus can heal the blind? We resign ourselves to just saying, "Well, this is so that God can display His glory..." as Jesus explained about the man, figuring that's as much as we can know, and since Jesus said it, that's the point. That's not His point!

His point is that no one knows the cause of the man's blindness! And even though we don't know the cause, (in this case He merely tells us it wasn't sin!), we're called to bring hope and healing to each wounded heart. We're called to STOP trying to figure out what went wrong, and why, and bring God's compassion and tenderness and love to the broken. There are broken people all around us, many of their own making, many of someone else's making, some, perhaps, under God's condemnation where we need to help them find repentance and forgiveness (gently!), some just trapped in a bad economy or with a sick body. And some are the victims of pure evil. In any event, we have one job: bring Jesus to them, heal them, cast out evil, and give them love and hope again. And that's how God is indeed glorified!


Remembering our son, Ben Jan 22, 1992 to Aug 26, 2011. 
http://www.conleycare.com/memorial/html/view3.php?ObitIdNo=710 
http://zorrounchained.blogspot.com/2011_09_01_archive.html