January 9 / Chapter 9

My first real study of John was in college. Our professor taught the book by using three questions
for each chapter:

   Who is Christ?
   What is faith?
   What is life?

Since that class, I have studied John in several Bible studies. John 9 begins with saying to us,
"the sixth sign" is the healing of the man born blind. What are the "signs"?

  1-changing the water into wine
  2-healing the nobleman's son
  3-the paraplegic man healed on a sabbath
  4-feeding of the 5,000
  5-calming of the storm that evening
  6-blind man healed
  7-Lazarus raised from the dead

I am reading John this time in CONVERSATIONS: The Message Bible With Its Translator.  Eugene Peterson has given me fresh eyes to see what is there. He writes:

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"This sign reveals Jesus as the incarnation of the Genesis Word, "Let there be light." It was the first day of light for the man born blind, but there was no Genesis consensus in the Jerusalem community that "it was good."

Like the third sign at the pool of Bethesda, this sign took place on the Sabbath. The cities religious experts didn't see this as a sign of anything other than one more case of Sabbath breaking that had to be dealt with. They did this by kicking the so-recently-blind man out of the synagogue.

The sign, as a sign, was also lost on the man's parents, whose concern was their standing with the religious establishment blinded them to God at work right before them. Jerusalem was full of blind men and women that day who "loved darkness rather than light." But the man blind from birth saw. He not only saw the city around him for the first time, but he also saw the sign to which everyone else was blind. He saw God was present and at work in his life, and he believed."
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May it be true for me that I will see that God is present and at work in my life AND in the lives of those we serve alongside. – Alleene Kracht