About to bust....

  ^1-2 Walking down the street, Jesus saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked, "Rabbi, who sinned: this man or his parents, causing him to be born blind?" ^3-5Jesus said, "You're asking the wrong question. You're looking for someone to blame. There is no such cause-effect here. Look instead for what God can do. We need to be energetically at work for the One who sent me here, working while the sun shines. When night falls, the workday is over. For as long as I am in the world, there is plenty of light. I am the world's Light."

 ^6-7He said this and then spit in the dust, made a clay paste with the saliva, rubbed the paste on the blind man's eyes, and said, "Go, wash at the Pool of Siloam" (Siloam means "Sent"). The man went and washed—and saw.  John 9

I know I went awhile and didn't post and now here come two in just over 12 hours but I'm about to bust.  I got up this morning and was curled up on the couch checking twitter and facebook updates and got finished and was just praying kinda "now what Lord? what for Malone? and why Lord? why did this happen?  I really have no blame for any person in my heart by why him? and really what now and what's next?"  and I thought to go to the story of Jesus healing the blind man with mud.  And the above verse is what I came to when I searched "Jesus mud" at www.biblegateway.com.

As hard as this all is...it is for God's glory! And from the beginning Malone and I have talked about all along giving him the glory for it.  The title in the Message translation of the above passage is "True Blindness".  Sort of made me grin a bit at how blind I am about things and how much I want to make things about me in my self-centeredness when it's never about us at all - It always come back to the One and Only - the thing we were all created to do - give Glory to God!

The healing story I was thinking I was going to find was this one:

²² They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. ²³ He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, “Do you see anything?”

 ²⁴ He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.”

 ²⁵ Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.   Mark 8

So next I went here and in reading this remembered how it was explained to me one time that in this story this man's healing didn't come all at once.  It took Jesus two applications.  It took steps of action.  Rehab if you will.

I was reminded in a comment on my last post by someone I've admired for more years than I can count to basically be mindful of all the small miracles. She was so wise as she always is - one of the many reasons I admire her.

Here are just a few of the things that are small miracles:

• he knows who I am (admitted to me a few weeks ago he had know idea who I was for about probably the first 5 days, just figured he could trust me because I had been there from the beginning)
• he can count now
• he made a purchase over the weekend with his debit card
• his desire to improve and get better is amazing
• he will try whatever the therapists throw at him
• he likes to fish now - never did that before
• he's showing us how to not take little things for granted like being fascinated by how things work
• he did not lose his knowledge of God or salvation
• he loves being with his friends
• he is still his compliant self and is routine oriented which is very helpful in his healing

The list could go on and on...my miracle is that I'm really trying to be more focused on what's really important this side of heaven.  I think for me, it boils down to this "Love God, love people".  For now I'm trying to stick there...and be thankful for the miracles in my life.