Care for Those Around You

Scripture

Our verse for today comes from John 9:6, ” When He had said these things, He spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva; and He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. “

Background

In the movie Jaws , Quint is hired by the city of Amity to catch and kill a Great White shark, which had begun terrorizing and killing in the waters surrounding that island town. While out in his boat, the Orca , Quint tells his mates, the chief of police and a young marine biologist, about his previous encounter with sharks. He was aboard the USS Indianapolis as it returned from delivering the Hiroshima bomb, when Japanese torpedoes struck the hull and sank the ship within minutes. He said the sharks showed up by the first hour, perhaps hundreds of them. And he said that as the shark approached his next victim, sometimes he would look right into them, look right at them with his unique eyes. Lifeless, black eyes, he called them.

Like a doll’s eyes. When the shark came at you, he said, it didn’t seem to be living, until it bit you, and those black eyes rolled over white. It’s a graphic, captivating image. The marine biologist described the Great White as a perfect engine, an eating machine. Lifeless, black eyes fit perfectly on an eating machine. They reveal all that the great fish is about.

Application

The blind man before Jesus wasn’t a perfect machine. He was far from lifeless, but his eyes worked no better than a doll’s eyes. They probably revealed much more of what had been done to him than of anything else. Each person that ignored or avoided him made him feel less and less like a man. So Jesus made some clay and put it on His eyes. Intent on healing the man, Jesus didn’t just speak it into existence this time. He reached and anointed his eyes with His hands. He did it because it was his eyes that needed anointing. They were lifeless, useless, and Jesus touched them and healed them. We have these sets of eyes around us. Maybe they belong to someone like a shark, maybe to a beggar. But they look right into us, and we know what they need. We know how to anoint them. But will we give them what they need? Will we touch them where they are hurting, or are we too good or too busy to spit on the ground and make clay?

Charge

As we seek Him today, use your eyes to do more than just aid you in ranking the people that you see. Look at someone around you, and touch them where they need anointing.