Decades ago, a friend of mine had a serious condition and was told by his doctor that he had weeks to live. Yet that friend survived to tell me the story only weeks ago, and he is thriving and well. It was an undeniable miracle from God and an answer to several people’s prayers. Yet the doctor, a nonbeliever, was just confounded. He assumed one of his tests must have given him a wrong result, or else it was just a medical anomaly. It turns out, even when God works the most clearly, there are those who will never be able to recognize it.
Take Jesus’ healing of the blind man, for example. Four different reactions emerged from among those who heard of it, and in fact this shows us four ways that people often react to God. First, some of the Pharisees with a narrow understanding of the Law said Jesus had to be a sinner because he broke the Sabbath. When we sometimes love Christian morality more than we love Christ, we can miss out on the unimaginably great things God is doing. Second, other Pharisees reasoned that only someone sent from God could have healed the blind man, but their thinking stopped there. Lots of people today similarly recognize that Jesus has to be the Son of God but are then afraid to live as if it’s true. And third, the blind man’s parents looked to society rather than the sign, and kept from any committal answer for fear of how it would affect their social standing. This should sound all too familiar in our day as well.
But there was a fourth response to the healing, from the healed man himself. He hadn’t even had the chance to know who Jesus was yet, but he could still say, “the man must have been a prophet.” He was seeking the truth that would eventually lead him to faith.
The proofs of God’s goodness abound. And sometimes they force us to grow our idea of God. How do we respond? Are we too wrapped up in our narrow traditions and rules to let God’s glory do its thing? Are we so concerned with what the world thinks of religious fanatics that we stifle our faithfulness? Or, like the blind man who could then see, are we yearning to know and worship the God that has made us altogether new?
