“They asked, “Who healed you? What happened?” He told them, “The man they call Jesus made mud and spread it over my eyes and told me, ‘Go to the pool of Siloam and wash yourself.’ So I went and washed, and now I can see!” “Where is he now?” they asked. “I don’t know,” he replied.“
John 9:10-12 NLT
The events that took place that Sabbath day caused quite a stir in the blind man’s community. It was unheard of for a blind man to receive his sight and the people there wanted an explanation. They knew the man had been blind because, after all, he had been born in that community. He had grown up there, and he now had to survive by abandoning any hope of personal dignity or respect and beg for alms, for money. There was no safety net of state handouts, and people in those days who were unable to work either begged for the money they needed to live on or they died. These poor unfortunate people were not like the beggars we meet on the streets in our towns and cities here in the UK. These were desperate people who cried out for alms as their fellow countrymen walked past.
The blind man’s life had been turned upside down by his encounter with Jesus. He had to adapt to a whole new way of living, and would now have to work for his livelihood, perhaps labouring in the fields or some other manual task. And his first challenge was to convince those in his community that he was now a different man. The people around him had to adjust as well, because the man no longer blind was a living and walking challenge to their religious complacency. The religion they followed was not powerful enough to heal a blind man, but they had heard about this Man who claimed to be the Son of God and who could heal the sick, the blind and the lame. And this Man said to them that He also had the power to assure them of eternal life if they believed in Him.
So the people interrogated the man to try and ascertain if there was some trickery going on. “How did He do it?”, they asked. The response was factual and so matter of fact that it must have been true. The man’s testimony has leapt from these pages in John 9 for two thousand years or so, encouraging and challenging all who read them.
The man was healed because he obeyed what Jesus had told him to do. Are we pilgrims equally as obedient. Let me ask a question – what has Jesus told us to do that we haven’t done yet? It may be something lacking the drama of that Sabbath day in Jerusalem, but important nevertheless. The blind man had a choice about obeying Jesus’ command, “go and wash”. And we too have a choice. On our discipleship pilgrimage wen will often come up against boulders that block our way forward. Many will camp there and give up the journey, saying this Christian life is too hard. But us hardy pilgrims reach out to God for His grace and strength to be overcomers. The apostle Paul wrote, “Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us” (Romans 8:37). We have the power within us, to be applied with faith and fortitude. And before us the boulders will turn out to be no more than a pebble on the ground.
Dear Father God. Thank You for Your strength and resources. We have not suffered in the way that Paul did on his missionary journeys, but we have challenges nevertheless. We are soldiers of Christ, able to press on His name. Amen.
Being a Pilgrim 