As he passed by...

"As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth." --John 9:1

Yesterday, Pastor Ray was teaching us about when Jesus healed the man born blind. I'd already been thinking about this particular story, because Robin and I are reading The Thief by Stephanie Landsem together during this Lenten season, and the action all kicks off from that singular event. In fact, I'd just read the chapter in the book when the blind man was healed. Perfect timing! I thought to myself.

So I pulled up my Bible app and went to John, chapter 9. My eyes fell to the first verse, and my heart was suddenly struck. Since we're going through the book of John chapter by chapter right now, we'd been talking about all that was going on prior to this healing, and I knew Jesus had just had a pretty intense back-and-forth in the temple with the religious leaders and the Jewish people gathered, to the point where they were wanting to stone him for heresy. (I mean, leave it to Jesus to be so much more concerned with imparting truth and revealing hearts than with ingratiating himself to the masses.)

But then, "as he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth." In the midst of all this turmoil and unrest, of his life being threatened and the people he'd come to save calling him all kinds of horrible things, Jesus looked up and noticed one man in the crowd, probably someone most people passed by without even seeing.

Talk about a sudden punch to the gut. I'm so often distracted by only what's directly before me, worrying about deadlines and to-do lists and what's on the schedule for next week, that I can walk through all the aisles at Kroger with my eyes glued to my shopping-list app, never even really seeing one other person. But here's Jesus, listening and looking for what purposes the Father has even in that moment of frenzied chaos. And because he does, he completely changes the man's life, bringing him not only his physical sight but eventually a progression of faith that gives him spiritual sight, as his profession about Jesus changes from "the man" to "a prophet" to "from God" to "Lord, I believe."

Lord, open my eyes. May I not be so engrossed in my own world that I miss the miraculous, beautiful things that you are doing and perhaps want to include me in doing as well.