How long have you been in the dark?
Devotion in motion
Weekend Inspiration
John 9:1-3
Chapter 9, “Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth.” Every 20 minutes someone in the United States goes blind. It’s a terrible tragedy to lose your sight. There’s only thing worse, and that’s to have never had
the opportunity to see in the first place.
Imagine being born blind. You lived your whole life having never seen a sunset – or a rainbow or a myriad of flowers blossom – or the smile on a giggly child.
A man born blind has no reference point. He has no recollection to draw on. He has no paints or brushes to color
in the pictures on the canvas of his imagination.
His mental images all look alike – grey, and empty, and
blank. Such was this man’s sad lot in life.
Verse 2, “And His disciples asked Him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
What a contrast in perspectives!
As we’ll learn later Jesus looked at this man and thought of alleviating his suffering. His disciples saw him and thought of affixing blame. Jesus asks, “How can I help?” His men ask, “Who can we condemn?”
But the disciples were only reflecting the current understanding of disease and suffering among the Jews at the time. The rabbis believed every illness or natural disaster was caused by some specific sin.
Sin and suffering supposedly had a cause and effect relationship… Tornados touch down on the evil. Cancer strikes the carnal. Heart attacks happen to the heathen.
Forest fires destroy the faithless, etc., and so on”
One Jewish rabbi commented, “There is no death without
sin, and there is no suffering without iniquity.”
Other rabbis went so far as to teach that a child could sin
en-utero and be punished with a deformity.
Other Jewish rabbis were crueler. They asserted that if a child was born with a disorder it had to be the result of their parent’s sin… Jesus’ disciples were merely echoing the
erroneous theological theories of their day.
In verse 3, “Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.” Jesus shoots down the theology of the rabbis. Birth defects, incurable illnesses, natural disasters can’t always be
pinned on a specific sin.
They may not be due to any particular sin at all.
When sin entered the world the whole created order became subject to randomness and futility. Theologians call it “The Fall.”
Suffering is now the fallout of the fall. In the here and now, seldom does God specifically inflict on a man a sentence of pain. But He does take our pain that’s a
consequence of the fall, and uses it for His glory!
In his commentary on Job, Frank Anderson writes, “The Bible explains suffering, not so much in origins as in goals. The purpose of pain is seen, not in its cause, but in its results. The man was born blind so that the works of God could be displayed in him.”
The disciples asked Jesus, “Why was this man born blind?” In essence Jesus answers, “It doesn’t matter, what counts is how God uses the situation to bring Himself glory!” God allowed this man to be born blind so the people in the Temple that day – and people in the ages since – might behold the wonders of His Son!
Here, a man who was born blind encounters a Man who can turn on the lights! A man who was born in the dark meets the light of the world and a sensational miracle occurs.
Amen
On a wall in his bedroom Charles Spurgeon had a plaque with Isaiah 48:10 on it: “I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.” “It is no mean thing to be chosen of God,” he wrote. “God’s choice makes chosen men, choice men…We are chosen, not in the palace, but in the furnace. In the furnace, beauty is marred, fashion is destroyed, strength is melted, glory is consumed; yet here eternal love reveals its secrets, and declares its choice.”
Victor Tafoya