The Blind Man

         Have you ever considered how miraculous it was that the blind men saw in the Bible? I mean, yes you think you know, but I mean really? Think of it this way. A blind person has no perception other than what he experiences through his other four senses. Touch presumably being the strongest. His doesn't see what something looks like, but feels what something looks like. He can feel shape. He can feel texture. But he cannot even begin to perceive what the object really looks like.

         Think about it. From the time we're babies, we learn to experience the world with what we're given. We're taught our colors: red is red, black is black, green is green, and so on. We're taught to guess what something feels like based on how it looks. We who can see trust our sight more than any other sense we possess. In some ways that severely limits us. We don't hear all we could hear or taste all we could taste. In other words we don't experience the world as much as we could. Blind people, in some ways, experience the world in a much better way. But that doesn't take away the fact that we must learn to experience our world.

         Let me explain something briefly. The brain becomes accustomed to the way thought patterns and information is sent through it. These 'paths' that these things travel upon become well worn and familiar, and become more and more difficult to change as a person ages.

         Now, back to the miracle:

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man who had been blind from birth. “Rabbi,” his disciples asked him, “why was this man born blind? Was it because of his own sins or his parents’ sins?”

“It was not because of his sins or his parents’ sins,” Jesus answered. “This happened so the power of God could be seen in him. 4 We must quickly carry out the tasks assigned us by the one who sent us. The night is coming, and then no one can work. But while I am here in the world, I am the light of the world.”

Then he spit on the ground, made mud with the saliva, and spread the mud over the blind man’s eyes. He told him, “Go wash yourself in the pool of Siloam” (Siloam means “sent”). So the man went and washed and came back seeing! (John 9:1-7, NLT)

         Think about this: that man was born blind. He had learned to experience the world in a completely different way than most people. So, naturally this would mean that his brain was wired differently than a sighted person. He took in information in a different way. He had no way to know what color was; a blind person doesn't even know what black is so that they don't know if they see black. He didn't know what sight was. He had no perception of sight. He didn't understand what things looked like. If not for the miracle of Jesus healing him totally he would have probably gone crazy from the sudden influx of information. Information that his brain wouldn't have known how to process. Jesus probably had to rewire his brain to understand sight. Let me emphasize this: he rewired the man's brain. The familiar paths that thoughts and information had traveled for his entire life was in all likelihood entirely changed by this healing. His new sight probably did have a learning curve, but just imagine the awesome thing Jesus did.

         Now that truly is a miracle.