FOCUS SCRIPTURE
John 9:1-41
DAILY BYTE
If the path you’re on is not allowing you the opportunity to give yourself fully to your life’s true purpose, then you’re on the wrong path! It really is as simple as that! The devotions this week provide us with the chance to reflect deeply on our life’s true purpose, and will encourage us to make the kinds of courageous choices necessary to get on or to stay on the right path. While this may be uncomfortably challenging, it is of course good news. Because deep down all of us long to give our one miraculous life to some magnificent purpose. Deep down, we all long to be instruments in the hands of God.
Consider this beautiful poem by Joyce Rupp:
A small, wooden flute
an empty, hollow reed,
rests in her silent hand.
it awaits the breath
of one who creates song
through its open form.
my often-empty life
rests in the hand of God;
like the hollowed flute.
it yearns for the melody
which only Breath can give.
the small, wooden flute and I,
we need the one who breathes
we await one who makes melody.
and the one whose touch creates,
awaits our empty, ordinary forms,
so that the song-starved world
may be fed with golden melodies.
Jesus is of course the greatest example of someone who offered his life as an instrument in the hands of God. His stated purpose was to bring abundant life (John 10:10). Or to use the language of Joyce Rupp’s poem, he came as a golden melody for a song-starved world.
The passage in John 9 is a beautiful example of how this was true for one individual. It tells the story of how Jesus restored the sight of a man born blind. What a transformation. What joy was his at being able to see. One of the most moving testimonies in scripture comes from the lips of this man when he simply says, “Once I was blind, but now I see.” In his words we can hear the golden melody that flowed from Christ’s purpose-filled life, offered as an instrument of healing and transforming love into the hands of God.
But tragically, there were those who refused to hear the beautiful cadences of grace that echoed from the life of Christ. They refused to see the light that was coming in to the world. In the story in John 9, the religious authorities even turned on the man who had been healed. They were blinded by their inability to recognize the purposes of God at work in ways that were beyond the narrow and rigid categories that they had prescribed.
It’s a story that reminds us that giving our lives to some magnificent purpose as an instrument in the hands of God is not without its difficulties. But in the end, would we honestly have it any other way?
Questions for reflection:
- Think of somebody who knows you very well - your spouse or a close friend perhaps. What do you think they would say if you asked them to list the ways in which you make their life richer and more meaningful?
- Why not ask them? Listen to what they say - it will surely point to the ways in which you are being an instrument in the hands of God.
- The things that we find life-giving for ourselves are often life-giving for others also. What are the things that are life-giving for you? How might these things be a part of your life’s purpose?
Thank you Lord God for the example of Jesus, who was so vibrantly alive, unapologetic about his purpose to bring life and wellbeing to others. Give to me the same clarity of purpose for the living of my life, that I may be shaped more and more to be an instrument of praise to you, that will add to the beauty in this world. Amen
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