While it is Day

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We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent) ... they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” -John 9:4-7,10-11

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Do you think it odd that Jesus did not just touch the blind man and make him whole. Certainly he could have simply spoke a word and his sight would have returned. Yet the Lord chose to involve the man in his own healing. How interesting that spit and mud would be the agents of healing. Perhaps the spit and mud are representative of the medicines that we are sometimes called to take? In truth, I struggle against taking my daily pills. What I want is a faster kind of healing.

Jesus seems to begin this passage with an acknowledgment that his days were numbered. In the same sense our lives are finite. Our capability to do good on earth is limited by the number of days in our life. Yet each day that we awake we have an opportunity to work the works of God. Each day we can bring a bit of healing to the lives of others. We can also bring a bit of healing to ourselves if we choose to see our pills as divine spit and mud.

Open our eyes Lord to the proverbial spit and mud all around us. And cause us to be agents of healing in the world.

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... this devotion is part of an ongoing series on the Gospel of John.