Mud Day

Having said this, He spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. “Go,” He told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means Sent). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing. John 9:6-7

He replied, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!” John 9:25

To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out. Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” “Who is he, sir?” the man asked. “Tell me so that I may believe in him.” Jesus said, “You have now seen Him; in fact, He is the One speaking with you.” Then the man said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped Him. John 9:34-38
In five days, over ten inches of rain fell on our island. The ground is saturated, it cannot drain, and over half of our yard has water so high it covers the tops of the grass. Step off the sidewalk and water fills your shoes. The standing water is not the worst of our problems. It is the mud that now encircles our home. Where trucks or equipment ventured off the driveway, there are deep muddy ruts showing their course. I despise the mud because I know that eventually it will end up in the house on my floors. There are large mud prints the size of our Doberman; not just footprints, but entire body prints. Like a chalk outline of a deceased person, you can tell exactly where her large body rested. I also do not like the mud because invariably, I slip in it or splash it onto my clothes. It is very difficult to get out. My son, however, loves the mud. His favorite day at school is mud day. He crawls, slides and wallows like a little piglet in it. We threw several sets of his clothes away because they will not launder, and we will buy him a new pair of shoes as his are full of wet sticky mud. I know another man who must have loved mud. It is the blind man told about in John 9. Read the whole chapter, not just what is printed here. The story is long and complicated. Basically, Jesus healed a man, who had been blind from birth, by putting mud on his eyes and sending him to wash them. I wonder what he first thought when he opened his eyes! Through the residue of that mud dripping off his face as he rinsed and rinsed his eyes clean, his vision because clearer and clearer! The Pharisees overlooked the miracle of it all in their narrow focus on keeping the law. They started throwing around accusations of sin because the miracle was performed on the Sabbath and because the formerly blind man refused to agree with them. In fact, he said, “All I know is that once I was blind, but now, I can see.” Sometimes, like the mud, we find ourselves in sin because we took a misstep, slipped and fell. Maybe, we dove in willingly and wallowed around in it for a while. In either case, we might make the healing experience of repentance very complicated. Like the Pharisees, we judge degrees of sin or we let Satan talk us in to thinking we are too stained to be cleansed. All it really takes is for us confess our sins and then to accept that we are forgiven. Don’t let the mistakes of the past or present keep you from the joy of being set free from your sin. Like the blind man, settle your doubts and the things that haunt you and say, “Lord, I believe!” When Jesus cleanses our sin stained heart and makes it clean, that is the greatest miracle of them all.