Today’s Reading: John 8:12-10:21
Good morning ladies and gentlemen! I do hope that your day is going well.
Yesterday morning at church, Bill Coffey spoke to us about not being “silent Christians” and referred us to the verses in John 7:37-38 which talk about going to Jesus if you’re thirsty and He will make streams of living water flow from us.
Today there are a lot of references to light and being blind. I find that intriguing because light helps you see. The Pharisees claimed that they could see, yet when Jesus told the people that, “I AM the light of the world,” they started an argument with Him. They questioned where He came from and even suggested that He was demon-possessed. Jesus said, “Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say.” Jesus wasn’t speaking in parables this time and He was saying things that the Pharisees could understand, but because they were so wrapped up in their own ways, Jesus, the light of the world, could not be seen by them. They were so far from God that even when God did appear to them in human form, they were too blind to see.
What I find interesting is that God also shares in this passage that Jesus heals a man who was blind from birth and until that time no one who had been born blind had been healed. Yet God chose to heal him “so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” (John 9:1-12) When this man was healed, even his close neighbors did not recognize him or they could not believe that it was him because he had been healed. Then the Pharisees come back into the picture (ugh!) and question this man because he was healed on the Sabbath and because they wanted to know who did it and how. The man explains exactly what happened. (Jesus “spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes.” Then He told him to go wash in the Pool of Siloam.) Even though the man believed that Jesus was from God, perhaps a prophet, the Pharisees could not believe it because Jesus had not kept the Sabbath.
This interrogating of the once blind man goes on. It includes his neighbors, parents and then more questions for him. When they return to him they ask the same questions they asked before and the man seems upset. “I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again?” The Pharisees continue claiming that Jesus must be a sinner, but the once blind man says, “Whether He is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”
Read John 9:35-41 to discover what the conclusion is for the once blind man and the blind Pharisees. Who is truly blind? What does Jesus say about the blind? Regarding all of this, we should ask ourselves if we are blind. Can we see the light of the world?
Have a great week!