“God has chosen what the world calls foolishness to shame the wise. He has chosen what the world calls weak to shame what is strong.”
1 Corinthians 1:27
You know that feeling when you have too many good things to choose from? Like when your friend is having a sleepover party on the same night as the church’s ice cream social; you’re going to have to miss one. That’s how it is for me right now; so many good subjects to write about!
My Bride is almost five thousand miles away from me right now. Yea, she’s overseas, and it’s so wild.
Remember the Switzerland trip idea that our daughter, Ella brought to us — the one we could never afford?
Those two landed in Vienna, Austria on Wednesday; they won’t be back for a while.
It takes my breath away thinking about it.
Can you imagine? God has taken this family a very long way, and this isn’t the only portion of God’s abundance that we are enjoying lately. It’s been pretty constant, recently. It has been fast paced and enjoyable because we’re still running with God; huffing and puffing to keep up.
Ups and downs though, too — good days and bad — but never a boring moment. What our Redeemer and Restorer has done for us is undeniably great. God has kept all of His Words to me.
Every, single one.
There is a story very similar to mine in John; about a man who was born blind — like me — except, in his case, he was both spiritually and physically blind, and in this passage, Jesus addresses both deficiencies.
If you have read it already, you may not have been able to spot the similarities, but;
Can I take some of your time to show you how much we can relate to our old, fellow convert, “the blind guy from birth”?
I’m sure you will be astounded.
In this story, Jesus uses mud to heal the eyes of a man who was born with the inability to see. Specifically, Jesus uses mud that He made with His own saliva.
I’m going to need you to go read John, chapter 9 — if you don’t remember it well — because there are way too many supporting verses for a single post. There is so much in it.
Do you remember me talking about us acting like ‘mud-people’ from the post Six Feet Under and Thriving? I wrote about how we are all in the mud, but most of us aren’t really ‘of the mud.’ The Bible uses the word ‘world’ to replace my word ‘mud,’ and it likens us to Jesus in an extremely endearing way. We should all celebrate it a lot more. In John 17:16, our friend and Father, Christ Jesus — Maker of all we can see — tells His listeners that the ones who follow Him, are no more “of this world” than He is.
Let’s loosen our reigns on rigid definitions here and generalize the meaning of the words: world, dust, soil, etc. — even the word: “flesh,” — all the way down to one simple term; ‘dirt.’
In this blind-man’s story, Jesus uses this same dirt to reveal things to someone that has no vision. That’s what got me interested in this one; God uses the world’s dirt to bring sight to someone.
Furthermore, Jesus uses a part of Himself — mixed in with the dirt — to bring about the clarity!
From the beginning of existence, our free-will has caused us to end up tainted by a muddy mentally that causes us to eventually, and permanently go blind and forget who it is we really are. But we are from God. We belong to Him and He wants us to get back to Him. So, He got down in the dirt to come to get us. He entered the world, into the dirt and became Jesus, Son of God; part dust, part God.
He had to do it. We say “because He loves us,” but truthfully, He did it because that’s literally the only way to love; to get down in the dirt with someone and help them up, ignoring their mess entirely.
People aren’t super willing to get down in the dirt on their own; so when the Bible talks about how humility is the key, and how getting low is actually the path to higher, it’s really, really hard for us to understand. It doesn’t really, make sense.
If I truly believe that the lowest spot I will ever have to “allow” myself to be in is the lowest spot possible for me to be in, then when the only job left for me is lower than that — say dishwasher or pooper-scooper — our pride will usually stop us in our tracks. We hit the breaks and say; “no way, that cannot be the answer.” We see something we don’t like and we tuck tail and run. Or we get defensive; “puffed up,” as 1 Corinthians says it. “I don’t have to do squat!” We’ll argue.
That’s what finally got this guy kicked out of the temple; the priest’s pride. The “super-religious-men” saw the man challenge them at what they do in life and they did not like it. They shouted at the guy about where he came from, basically by calling him a no-good sinner; dirt. It sounded like this;
“You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.”
But what I’m seeing, is that a lot of what is taught in the Bible is impossible to see, unless we get low enough to see it.
Now, I can get there, sometimes; but I’m just not good at staying there. It’s a miserable place to be at first; and extremely humiliating at times!
It takes perseverance to stay low, and that’s why, for people like me — full of arrogance and pride — it’s extremely difficult to do.
In order to see through moments of irresistible pride, we must resist responding in pride by taking an opposing stance to pride.
Pride says; “I should not have to do such a task!”
Humility says; “I’ll do anything in love.”
The path to humility is humiliation.
This makes me think of the story later, in John 17, where Jesus — upon being confronted with a challenging crowd — bent down for a moment to draw in the dust, before answering their question. It’s possible — and I believe likely — that as Jesus played with the dirt, He was thinking about how to explain to the angry and confused people that, everything is dirt. I bet He had a thought like; ‘now how do I lovingly, reveal to the dust, that they are all, also, dust?’
The Bible is clear about it; we came from dust, and we will return as dust. No one in that crowd was anything better than anything else.
Then the crowd slowly disperses and in verse 26, Jesus drops this line; “I have made You known to them,” He says about God, “and will continue to make You known so that the love You have for Me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”
And then — immediately into the next chapter — Jesus humbly allowed Himself to be arrested and taken to His death — for absolutely no wrong doing.
The spit and dirt being used to open the eyes of the blind is a mirror of the redemption story we have through Jesus Christ — as I referenced in the post: “So Much Power, One Man“– because Jesus is God; and that’s all it takes.
My life was a complete mess. And actually, it still is — a lot of ways; my family would agree. But I think — no matter what we do — it’s just going to be a bit dirty.
But look at what God can do with dirt!
“One thing I know, is that I was blind, and now I see!”
What have I come to then? More humility is in order.
So, go. If we want to be Jesus to a hurting world who seriously needs Him, we have to get out there and be willing to get down to lift those up around us. Humility in love is taking the injustice so that no one else has to; “so that God’s glory may be revealed.”
That’s a key phrase, right there; “so that.”
It’s the “so that” that we miss a lot, and when we miss it, we tend spiral into fear, worry, and despair; we accept our blindness and settle in as the beggars we believe we are. God always has a “so that” that’s often just barely hidden to us. When we realize that God is in complete control, and we’re not — and that He is one thousand percent good — we can begin to understand that there is a purpose for each and every struggle in this world, and in our lives.
God takes, even the horrible things of this world, the ugly stuff in our lives — the ‘dirt’; the pain — and uses it all, mixed with His very own Spirit, to give us the vision we need to be able to have the abundance and everlasting life He intended for us to have.
My Bride will be listening to this post in Europe… He changes lives, man.
(Hi Sweetheart, I love you so much. Thanks for putting up with me. You’re amazing — even though I’m really bad at displaying this in person, and I want to be outright with everyone here, for you, I’m a wild mess most times at home, guys.)
Anyway, let’s not stop now. God is so good.
Absorb the Word.
Until next time, loved ones, have a blessed week.
– God Exists –
Did you know you can subscribe to this blog? If you’re an avid reader, submit an email address and you’ll receive a notification when a new post is published.
Don’t miss out!
Leave a Reply