There is a story in the Bible about a man who was born blind (John 9). One day Jesus happens to be walking by the blind man and decides to heal him of his blindness. The interesting thing to me about the story though is that Jesus makes some mud and rubs it on the man's eyes, then He tells the man to go and wash off his face in pool of Siloam. The pool obviously was not right there because the Bible says that the man went and washed, and came back seeing.
There are plenty of examples in the Bible of Jesus healing people right where they are.
Why not this guy? Why send him with mud on his eyes to some pool?
Why even the need to make mud and rub it on the guys eyes?
There is another story in Luke (Luke 18:35-42) where another blind man is asking Jesus to heal him and Jesus says "What do you want me to do?"
The blind man says, "I want to see!"
Jesus responds, "All right, receive your sight, your faith has healed you."
So why all the drama with the mud and the and making the guy walk to a pool and back to cure his blindness?
Among other reasons, such as Jesus can pretty much decide to heal people how ever He wants to, I believe that making the man "go" somewhere and "do" something in order to receive the gift was something Jesus wanted us to catch.
Often times as Christians, I think we want to just throw up a prayer and ask God to take care of an issue or a problem and we think we have done our job.
We are disturbed by the images of hurricane Katrina, or mudslides in China, or learning of little girls caught up in the sex trade industry or little boys in the slave labor industry and we want to offer up a prayer on their behalf and then sit back in the recliner with our remote and a snack and think that we have done our job.
That cannot be the attitude in which we approach things.
We need to be prayer warriors for sure, but Jesus wants us to "go" and "do" the work that he has equipped us for.
What is it that bothers you? What do you see in this world that disturbs you? What gets your blood boiling?
Whatever that is, don't just pray about it and think that the work is done.
"Go" down to the pool and "do" the work of washing the mud off of your eyes.
How are we going to see healing take place and lives being saved if we have mud in our eyes?
