Don't be blind to the blind

I have spent the entire day in nearly complete silence.  It was not a sought-after silence, nor was it particularly enjoyable, but it was certainly silence, nonetheless.  I woke up this morning to find that my voice was almost completely gone.  Throughout the day, try as I might to speak to and communicate with the other people around me, it only came out in garbled little croaks, or even nothing at all.  I finally gave up around lunchtime and just stopped talking - no one could hear me, anyway.

It was remarkable how ostracized and ignored I felt today.  And the thing is, I'm positive that no one actually tried to make me feel like an outsider - they simply couldn't hear me.  No matter how hard I tried to interject a comment, to offer a suggestion, to ask a question in class, to simply make myself heard, I couldn't do it.  And I felt sooo isolated.

So this afternoon, I opened my Bible to the story of the man born blind.  I couldn't help but wonder if he felt the same way that I did.  Sure, he could speak, but he could not see, and it is obvious from the text that he was also ostracized from society.  And his situation was far worse than mine - mine was for a day, unintentionally, by people whom I know really do care for me.  His was for an entire lifetime, by people who never showed him a kindness his whole life.

But Jesus did.  Jesus loved him anyway.  Jesus saw a need that everyone else chose to ignore, and healed a would that no one else would acknowledge.  How many times have I walked past a homeless person on the street, convinced that they didn't really need my help?  How often do I ignore stirrings in my spirit to give a kind word to someone, deciding that it's not the Lord telling me to do it, just my own overactive imagination?

Don't be blind to the blind.  Don't tune out the deaf.  Don't ignore the powerless.  Learn to pay attention.  Love like Jesus did, and minister to the people who need it most - the downtrodden, unloved, and ignored.  Give a voice to those who have none. 

John 9:1-13

 ¹ As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. ² His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
   ³ “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. ⁴ As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. ⁵ While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
 ⁶ After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. ⁷ “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.
 ⁸ His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, “Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?” ⁹ Some claimed that he was.
   Others said, “No, he only looks like him.”
   But he himself insisted, “I am the man.”
 ¹⁰ “How then were your eyes opened?” they asked.
 ¹¹ He replied, “The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see.”
 ¹² “Where is this man?” they asked him.
   “I don’t know,” he said.

The Pharisees Investigate the Healing

 ¹³ They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. ¹⁴ Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath. ¹⁵ Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. “He put mud on my eyes,” the man replied, “and I washed, and now I see.”