I Once was Blind But Now I See

John 9:1-7

I grew up in a semi-Christian home. What I mean by is that my family went to church and did the church thing on Sunday but really never lived like Christians on days other than Sunday. The only thing I remember my parents using from the bible were the places where it said children obey your parents. Oh we knew the basics that Jesus died for our sins and that if we would believe on him we would be saved and we did, at least in theory. I always felt convicted about the way I lived my life and was very pious at times attempting to act like a good Christian boy ought to but when push came to shove, when the way I looked in the eyes of my peers would be compromised I usually fell. I’d go on trips with my youth group occasionally and come back recharged and I’d do well for a while but eventually I fell back into my old ways. But I never did any of the real bad stuff. I never did any drugs or drank or anything like that and so I still considered myself a good kid. One of the reasons I tried so hard to be a good kid was because of my parents, I knew that they loved me. My dad had always been a part of my athletic career as a coach in many of the sports I played and my mother was always at all the games cheering me on. Then in eighth grade my parents split up just after Christmas we sat down as a family to talk about the situation, the idea as far as I could tell was that this was not permanent and so I didn’t worry about it too much. In addition to that I was a pretty good athlete and basketball player in particular and during this time basketball really helped me through. Eventually my parents got back together and things were good again. I entered high school and though that was rough my parents were back together and I was looking forward to basketball season where I would earn the respect of my classmates because of how good I was. Unfortunately my freshman basketball season was an incredible disappointment and thus I was needing to lean on my parents in order to get through the fact that basketball wasn’t going very well as 6 freshman made varsity and I was not one of them, I didn’t even start on JV. I worked really hard and was starting half way through the season. If I hadn’t had my parents I don’t know where I would have been though. During my sophomore year things fell apart. Its funny because I succeeded in making Varsity this year, though I was a swinger and ended up playing very little on both Varsity and JV. During this year my parents again split up and this time it was an argument they were having about me that was the catalyst. So now I no longer had my parents to lean back on and with basketball not going so well and not really fitting in at school my life looked bleak. Fortunately for part of this year I was involved in a youth group, one that without my even knowing it kept me for a time from getting into anything too bad. But finally I grew weak and as it was my parents love for me that had always kept me from drugs, with their being too busy caring only about themselves and their feud between each other. It was near the end of my sophomore year that I first smoked pot and it was great. Along with the wonderful feelings which it brought it also came with a bit of popularity. I now had a group of friends who thought I was cooler because I had smoked pot. I continued further down this road though not too heavily. I didn’t do it as much as most people after all and I had a reputation for being a good kid that I didn’t want to loose. I went a long time without drinking as well because my father when I was young had been an alcoholic as had many of my uncles on my mothers side and so I was scared that I might become one. But eventually I gave in to that as well, it may have had something to do with my parents getting back together during my senior year as well as their silent consent. During my parents time apart this time, there were very few rules at my dad’s place and at my moms I pretty much had free reign too though my mother was in charge. Then when they got back together, my dad moved in with my mom and he started demanding respect and that I listen to him. It was hard because I didn’t respect him. How could I, he had caused me to undergo shame at school by buying pot off a friend of mine among other things. Regardless of why When Prom came around my senior year a friend of mine made sure I had the opportunity to do some heavy drinking, and I did. It was fun though I never did it again while I was in high school because my parents did ask many questions about what I did and where I went and things like that. When I went off to college I knew that with no parents around I could get away more easily with the things I really wanted to do, the things that I thought would bring friends and popularity. So I did. I partied, mostly with old friends from high school, but I partied mostly on weekend for my first semester or two. My parents knew a little bit about what I was doing but they also knew there was little they could do about it, I was my own man now. It was about this time that an interesting thing happened. I met some people who were cool in my eyes but didn’t party. One night I was playing a video game called Halo, and I discovered that I could play against other people on campus by hooking my XBOX up to the internet. So played that night and I did okay, these other guys were good. Eventually the games ended and so I went for a walk down the hall and as I was going to saw some people come out of a room near the men’s bathroom all talking about Halo and so I was like hey were you guys just playing Halo. So we talked for a while and eventually it became a regular thing that when any of us weren’t doing homework, in class, or at a meal, we were playing Halo. Eventually after one fun night of Halo we were chatting in the hall and I discovered that two of my friends were Christians and that they were members of this club on campus, more than member actually they were leaders. I find it funny now because the name of the club was InterVarsity or IV but when I heard the name I was like what sport is that. So there was like a running joke in this group of friends that these two were starters on this IV team. That was my outward response but inwardly God was working. Through these two guys God spoke to me, not through their words but just by there mere presence. Knowing that they were cool and that they were Christians just made me rethink my current thoughts about Jesus which were essentially not yet God, when I get older then I’ll follow you but right now I’m living for me. But I began to rethink that idea and I began to see that my life was miserable despite my living however I wanted, I was robbed of joy. Oh I had pleasure but I have no peace, no joy. So I thought and I thought and about 10 months after I had met them I decided I’d give God a chance. So I came into my sophomore year decided that I was going to go to this IV thing. I told them that when there was a meeting that they needed to come and get me and I would go. So the first week they came and I said come back next week. I was afraid really, afraid that as many of them must have known the way I was living, more than the drinking and the pot, there was the music I listened to, so I was afraid that I was going to be rejected. Eventually I did go probably every other week for that semester and over Christmas break I had time think and contemplate life as well as deal with more family turmoil. It was during this time that I looked back and realized that the weeks when I didn’t go to IV I felt miserable and the ones I did go I felt much better, as if a weight was lifted off of me. So during winter break I made a decision to go to IV every week from now on, I was not going to miss it. I also bought a bible and started reading it regularly. Though I was reading it daily I wasn’t getting a whole lot out of it, I couldn’t understand what was going on, partly I think because I was reading the KJV, which is just difficult to do. So after IV one week I was chatting with the staff worker named Ross Hickey about that and he showed me his bible, it was an NIV Thompson Chain Reference Study Bible, and I could actually understand what was going on. So he told me he’d buy me one, the next week I talked to him and he didn’t have it yet. The following week he still didn’t have it. The third week he gave me his bible. This was amazing to me. I knew that for a Christian the most important thing was their bible. In addition another aspect of my upbringing was not being allowed to accept gifts from people. I remember after a baseball game where one of my friends parents bought me baseball cards and gum and I was so excited…till I got home and realized I had made a big mistake. I didn’t have to give them back but I knew never to accept something like that again. So this act of Ross giving me his bible helped me to experience grace and understand love. Now I didn’t think about it in those terms but the reason I loved IV so much was because the people there loved me, that and the message. So when I got the bible I started reading in the Old Testament despite being advised to start with the new and just took off. Over the next couple months I read all the way from Genesis to Psalms as well as here and there reading different books in the New Testament and I loved it. From there I grew and I grew to the point where I wanted to join leadership the next year. I wasn’t allowed on immediately they gave me a job to do with the expectation that I might be able to join in the spring. The job was a GIG a Group Investigating God in which I was supposed to invite unbelievers and talk to them about Jesus. It was tough and unsuccessful for the most part but I grew a lot through it. Once on leadership I grew more and more and learned from the other leaders and from Ross and a guy named Bob Killam who was also helping out. As I grew over the next couple of years I came to realize that I couldn’t see myself doing anything except working with IV so in my second Junior year I talked to the area director of Maine and he encouraged me and I worked at preparing myself for that task for the next year and a half when I started fundraising which was about a year ago.

As I look back on my upbringing on my parents and the shame that I felt from being their son, and the immense pain I and my brothers suffered, don’t get me wrong I love them but I always wonder why God didn’t provide me with better parents. Why did he allow me to grow up with parents who, at the time, cared more about their own feud that their own children. I mean doesn’t God love me. In John 9:1-7 I find the answer to that question.

But before I get to how this passage relates to my life lets make sure we know what this verse is saying. So we have this man who was blind from birth and apparently it was well known by all. The disciples, wanting to know Jesus teaching on circumstances in a sense, as “who sinned this man or his parents that he was born blind?” It is obvious from the way in which this was stated that it was widely believed that if a person was born with an infirmity it was a punishment from God. Moreover that anything bad that might happen to us in our lives comes from some sort of sin. They do not ask was this a punishment from God because there was no question in the minds of people those days if it was a punishment from God. The real question was who was the cause of the punishment. Was is the fault of the parents or the fault of the child himself, who must have somehow committed a sin before exiting the womb. Apparently there was no consensus on whose fault it was and as Jesus was teaching many new things his disciples were curious as to which side he favored. Jesus, as he usually does, astounds them by stating “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” Jesus has this habit of answering questions that aren’t asked. The question these disciples should have been asking was why was this man born blind, so Jesus chose to answer that one while at the same time dismissing their question. And that answer “this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” Imagine being the man born blind and sitting listening to a conversation that at the outset probably seemed similar to one he had heard many times always wondering himself what he could have done that would cause God to curse him the way in which he did and why if it was something his parents did was he forced to suffer in such a way. Why should a one person be punished for someone else’s sin. I’m not sure what he was thinking or expected but I am fairly confident he was not expecting Jesus to say what he did. Imagine going through your whole life thinking that something is wrong with you, that God has cursed you. What a hopeless life that must be, thinking that everything that happens to you is because God hates you, and then discovering that all of your pain and suffering did not happen because God hated you but so that his Glory might be revealed. Now I know on the surface this may look like a reason to be angry with God for putting you through this for the sake of his glory, what is he selfish or something. But for the man born blind this brought purpose to all his sufferings and revealed that not only did God not hate him, instead he was being given the great honor of being one of God’s chosen instruments, and more than that to be healed by Jesus Christ, the son of God, though he didn’t yet know that. I think two of the reasons we get upset when bad things happen are that we think this means God doesn’t love us, because if he loved us wouldn’t he spare us this pain and the second reason is this sense that our suffering is meaningless and that is why this event is so amazing. Jesus reveals to us that not only does he love us but he plans to use this event to bring Glory to himself and he has chosen us to be part of that process.

This passage is so personal to me because I feel like I am the blind man, or I was before I was able to discover IV. I have often wondered why God gave me to the parents he did. Why couldn’t he have given me to parents who would have been less selfish and sacrificed for me where my parents became selfish? I also thought that God hated me because of the life I lead which, though I must take responsibility for my actions, were very much the result of my upbringing as well as the fact that though I had been to church I had never encountered Jesus. Then I encountered Jesus through IV, through the people and the messages and the love and realized that God did love me and though I still didn’t understand why I had been born to my parents I knew that God loved me. I am sure I had read this passage many times before I realized that I was the man born blind and that the reason I had been born to my parents was so that God could show his Glory through delivering me and being a witness to the fact that even today God works miracles and that a kid who grew up in the home that I did and did the things which I did is not beyond hope.

Now for me the blindness from this story was the family I grew up in, the school I went to, but it can be anything that happens to us that is out of our control. God is telling you that this did not happen because of some sin but instead because God desires to show his power by delivering you from it and for some of you I assume he already has.