The Power of Belief

What is obvious is that the man born blind lived in darkness.  (John 9)  He not only lived in darkness; he had lived in darkness every day of his life.  His eyes never saw light when he came from the darkness of his mother's womb.  And, by the time he ran into Jesus on the road, he had accepted the fact that he would remain in darkness until his unseeing eyes closed in the darkness of death.  While some surely pitied him, some declared he deserved his fate because of his or his parent's sin.  The darkness of these who could see with their eyes was a darkness even deeper than the man whose eyes were blind.

 

Of course, when Jesus came along, it was Jesus who saw him.  The man born blind might have heard the loud commotion of a crowd coming down the road, but he could not have known that his whole life was about to change.  Just before Jesus spoke to the blind man, the Word records Him saying, "As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world."  (John 9:5)  As we read the story, we see that the healing of blind eyes was not spoken into existence by a commanding word of Jesus, but something which required the blind man to endure what he could have regarded as further humiliation and an act of trust in walking to the place he was told to go. 

It was at the pool of Siloam where the darkness disappeared and the light came brightly upon him.  But, it was even later when eyes that were meant to see things that were invisible truly experienced the brilliant power of the Light of the World.  In that final moment with Jesus, his words were, ""Lord, I believe" (John 9:38), and the darkness within was broken by the penetrating and prevailing light of the love of Christ.  It is that way with each of us who have trusted in Christ.  The moment of trusting and believing is a moment when the darkness is broken and we really see the One who brings the light to us enabling us to see what seeing eyes could never see.