Mud Before the Miracle

John 9:1-7
Jesus said of Himself, ‘If anyone has seen me He has seen the Father’ - meaning that His works and actions while here on Earth were an exact representation of the words and actions of God himself.

So what Jesus did here is of particular interest to us because here we find Jesus responding to a question that has haunted mankind since time began… It is the question of the suffering of the innocent.

This man was born blind and of course, a baby is the picture of innocence and so the question arises ‘How could this happen to one so innocent?’

The disciples do what is still done today – in an effort to answer the question of the suffering of the innocent we go looking for someone to blame.
If we can accept the answer given by Jesus here and come to that simple trust, then there is healing for our tortured souls… Jesus says – ‘You are looking for a reason why this has happened so you can blame someone - instead lift up your eyes and see what God can do.’
The unusual thing about this man’s healing is that, in getting Him to the place of healing, Jesus first adds to the problem.

God, like any Father, wants to engage us in the process of the answer to our prayers rather than spoon feed us because it is in the process we learn life-skills that cause us to become the answer.
We asked for a miracle and what happened?  We got ‘mud in the eye’… ‘mud’ in the very area of our lives that needed the miracle.
So now it seems that things are worse! How confusing! How offensive!
-    But hang on, don’t lose heart – don’t give up – Jesus is at work in our lives in ways that at first seem contrary and even bizarre… and sometimes the mud comes before the miracle.
When the God who inhabits eternity, the God who knows the end from the beginning, the God who knows the words you are about to speak before you speak them… reaches out of His dimension to interact with your life in this dimension, sometimes it can seem totally random.
-    As random as asking for a miracle and then getting ‘mud in our eye’…
And in the very act of dealing with the ‘mud’ we find that the whole cleansing process goes beyond the surface and deep into the root issue.  
The ‘mud’ He sends has no healing in it; the healing comes when you are washing it off.

The ‘mud’ He sends is merely a way to awaken in us the response that is needed - to bring sight to our blindness, light to our darkness and open up our lives to possibilities that we never would have seen.

Some of us have come to Australia from other Nations - we came asking God for a better life but right now the ‘mud’ is coming…
And the Lord says, “Go and wash,” - go and deal with it and in the process of washing off the mud, your eyes are opened to the possibilities you are presently blinded towards.

Some of us have asked the Lord to resolve issues of conflict in our relationships and it seems like things have just gotten worse… but now, because of the mud, you are compelled to act.  Now you are stirred to rise up out of complacency and deal with things you previously were content to live with.