Surprise!

Surprises come in quite a variety, associated with an entire range of emotions. The most delightful, in my opinion, is a surprise that is positive, unexpected, and SO unanticipated. For example, the growing relationships with my grandchildren as they become young adults is one of the best and certainly not something I really anticipated or expected.

In the Gospel of John, chapter 9, we read about Jesus’ healing and return of sight to a man born blind. The Gospel emphasizes the fact that the man was “born blind”: he had never been able to see and there was no accident that caused his blindness. Jesus spits in the mud, puts it in the blind man’s eyes, and sends him to the Pool of Siloam to wash his eyes. The man-blind-from-birth goes, washes, and instantly can see!

Now THIS is a surprise! Everything about this would be a surprise. First of all is the miracle of sight. That’s clearly THE big deal. But think about the wonder and amazement of being an adult and seeing things you had only ever heard or tasted or smelled or touched before. How does your brain even process this? And color! Before, colors were meaningless words with no reference point, because with almost no exceptions color is a sight-only property. What do you even do with that?

John Newton’s classic hymn Amazing Grace says, “I once was blind but now I see.” This refers to the healing by Jesus’ grace of our spiritual blindness. What kind of surprises are visible now to us that we could not even understand or describe before?

Sadly many of us don’t go to wash in the Pool of Siloam or else we continue to keep our eyes closed and we miss out on all of the wonderful surprises of Jesus.

Open my eyes, Lord, I want to see you.