smudged ink.

God's ways lower than our ways (Isaiah 55:9)

By: Peter Walker

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Length: 41 mins

Publisher's summary

God looks for you. He searches for you. Jesus notices when you’re not there, and he leaves the crowd, the event, to find you.

I hope God’s words and love come off these pages and stay with you, as ‘spirit and life’.

(Excerpt)

Introduction:

To heal the blind man, Jesus spat in the ground, made a paste in the mud, and smeared this mud in the sockets of the man’s eyes. He asked the man if he could see. Not clearly, he said. Jesus put his hands on him again to finish this work of healing.[1] It is also interesting that Jesus did this in private (took the man ‘outside the village’), and after it was done Jesus sent him home and told him not to tell anyone.

Everything about this story goes against everything I want in God, and often demand from God. I want to ‘see’ power, but Jesus hid this miracle from people like me. I want things of God to be instant, shocking, but Jesus used an earthy, messy process over time to do this. I want proofs of God to blaze across the sky, across my soul, but Jesus spat on the ground, stirred in the dirt. I want things of God to be beyond question at any moment, but midway through this process of healing it was questionable – the man said he could not see clearly.

Many people turned away from Jesus because he was beneath them. His words were off-putting, his actions low-brow. He told people that to be in right standing with God they needed to ‘eat his flesh, drink his blood’; he let prostitutes touch him, pour perfume on him.[2]

‘Like one from whom people hide their faces, he was despised and we held him in low esteem.’ (Isaiah 53:3)

I know I’ve missed God looking for him in the skies, when he is mixing spit in the dirt.



[1] Mark 8:22-26

[2] John 6:50-58; Luke 7:36-50