He doesn’t quite know what it is that they say. They tried to use words to describe what his mind could not grasp, a reality that is strange to his senses, something of a mesmerizing beauty with an incredible attractive force. He yearned for it. Anytime they mentioned it, his heart was throbbing and the urge grew stronger; an urge for that which everyone except him experienced. He started questioning: “What’s wrong with me?” “Why can’t I have it?” “Can anyone help or cure me?” “Is there any way out?”
Those questions were pangs of sorrow in his mother’s heart. Not only didn’t she know how to answer that but also watching the face of his child realizing his bitter and painful condition was a grievous scene. She couldn’t help but try to dodge the issue by bringing up a different subject as tears welled up from her eyes. But it was without success. She felt helpless. She started thinking of ways of telling the matter to his boy wisely, and with love. She then sat down with him, scrubbed her tears off her face; her lip began to quiver as she held him tightly in her arms and told him she would never leave his side; that she’ll always love and care for him but most of all that she’ll be his eyes.
Words could not be clear and tears won’t be withheld because she was overcome at the moment with empathy, as any mother would if they were in a situation when they have to tell to their boy that he was born blind; that he’ll probably never see while others could.
Although the reality shattered his world, that intimate moment with his mother, her kindheartedness and compassion gave him comfort but it was just temporal. As he grew up, he couldn’t rely on his mum or dad in everything but he knew he had to start the painful discipline of learning to live without his eyes. He started to use the long stick to move around. He couldn’t do much with his life, and ended up substandard for there was no other carrier choice for him if not to become a beggar.
He’d been used to this life of blindness that left him often in a kind of solitude while begging in the streets for the whole day. He was vulnerable as people stole from him from time to time and that exactly was the stab in his open wound, ever reminding him of his weakness.
However, this wasn’t the main reason he wanted to see. He wanted to see the sun, the sky, the trees, buildings, the water and these people that loved him. He wanted to see himself, the nature, or the beautiful things everyone talked about. He’s been wanting to see the face of a woman, a child… just to put a face to what he’s always been feeling with his touch; but alas, he’s been born that way and no medicine or person could open his eyes. There was no hope, no way out.
As Jesus passed by, he saw the blind man from birth. After his disciples finished asking him questions as to why the man was born so, he spit on the ground and made mud with saliva. Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud and said to him, ’Go, wash in the pool of Siloam’. So he went and the miracle came about; sight happened.
Linger over this…
So quickly we pass over these familiar words that we’re blinded (pun intended) to what really happened. What I mean is that a man born blind really got his sight for the first time. But that isn’t at all the most amazing thing in the story. Jesus said that the reason the man was born blind is for ‘the works of God to be displayed in him’ (John 9:3).
That right there blew my mind away as I mused over it. These were not the familiar words anymore but these came to help me catch up cognitively with God’s wisdom. At first I asked: “How can anyone let his loved one go through this traumatic experience of God-knows-how-many-years of blindness?” “Is that love?” “Did it really come from a loving God to ordain the unbearable pain on the man for ‘his glory’?”
But as the text went on, it unleashed a truth that shut my insolent mind. The man, after walking out of blindness for the first time, couldn’t but think that Christ is from God: “If this man were not from God, he could do nothing” (John9:33). Afterwards, I witnessed a thousand more amazing miracle happen in this man’s life: Faith. He worships Christ (John9:38). Christ healed him of his physical blindness and that long physical blindness he went through set the stage for another healing: his spiritual eyes were opened and he could see.
Oh that we would see God’s goodness and infinite love in his design and as William Cowper says: “Behind a bitter providence, he hides a smiling face”. I’d rather be that man than being born with perfectly functioning eyes than being like those complacent Pharisees that refused to believe in Christ and die in my spiritual blindness for eternal destruction.
It all boils down with the words from Christ at the end of the story which became perfectly clear:
“For judgment I came into this world that those who do not see may see and those who see may become blind.”
John 9:39