"I am the Light of the world" John 9:5
You see a man broken, held down by and infirmity that he could not control. A man who is blind. A man who is suffering with no way of escape. A man living in darkness. He had no power to take his blindness away. It was a fact of his existence.
But one day, a Light came, someone who had the ability to take his blindness away! Now this man did something very strange, He made clay from His spit and dirt; then He applied the clay to the man's eyes saying, "Go, was in the pool of Siloam (which is translated sent"). This man who was blind went, trusting if he washed, he would regain his sight!
We look at this story and say o this is nice, what a great act of compassion! The truth is that this is the story of all of us. We all walk in darkness. We all are broken. We are slaves to sin. We by our power cannot stop ourselves from sinning no matter how hard we try! We seem powerless to stop ourselves. Sure we might do something good that builds us up for a while but after that we are crushed back down in despair. Not free.
Or we have recognition of our sin. We look at our lives and say, "You know what, we are good." When in truth we are blind to our sin that we are doing.... I feel I have spent to much time on this, let's get back to Christ.
So we walk in darkness, then all of a sudden there is a Light we have never before seen! A Light that passionately calls us to come forward! A Light that beckons, and as you move toward it, you begin to realize that the darkness around you starts to fade. Your ideas of what is true begins to alter... Before you could see nothing due to the sin that blinded you to the truth. But now, as you run toward the Light, you see a world that is vibrant and full of life!
Now I believe this is the perfect place to point out something truly interesting. That Christ when healing the blind man didn't do it right there. But called the man to a leap of faith. Yes Christ did everything to heal the man. But Jesus left the decision to be healed, to come out of darkness completely up to the man! The man couldn't not have been healed if Christ didn't first call him, but at the same time He wouldn't have been brought out of darkness if He didn't trust Jesus.
In the same way, Jesus calls us out of the darkness. He calls us to the Light so that He can makes us His lights in the world. But He does not force us to come to Him! O how gracious is He to let His light shine into our darkness! So that we may choose to follow Him and shine His light in the darkness!
