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.” -John 9:11
The man was born blind. He’d never seen. Anything.
There must have been a little piece of the man that was afraid to see. The devil you know is safer than the angel you don’t. As painful as blindness would seem, he’d never known anything different.
It’s my belief that this man would not have gone to Siloam to wash his eyes if Jesus didn’t cake mud over them. If Jesus would have simply said, “Ok, jump up and go to Siloam. The touch of water will give you your vision,” the man would have walked away, turned left instead of right, and stuck to the life with which he was familiar.
That’s what most of us do, after all. We cling to our limitation. We reinforce our flawed thinking. We justify our bad reactions. We settle for our so-so default attitude. And we “struggle” with our compulsive behaviors—instead of abandoning them.
That is, until Jesus puts mud on our face. That’s different. That’s uncomfortable. It’s also embarrassing. Everyone is used to the fact that I’m blind (angry, irresponsible, lazy, irritable, negative, shallow, selfish…), but this? Mud on my face? Now I have to find some water. I guess I’ll go to the spot that Jesus is guiding me and see what’s there.
Or, to quote Jesus in a similar situation: “Do you want to be well?”
Do you? Do you want to see? Even if it changes everything?