Open Our Eyes: God's Work Through Brokenness and Healing

The disciples are perplexed. We don't know Jesus. What should we make about this? And Jesus understands that actually the reality is far darker than they think because it's not only bad people or people who we think deserve it that experience tragedy and pain and loss and heartbreak. Life, as my mom used to always say, life's not fair, and it's not been fair to this guy. Horribly evil things happen to otherwise faithful people. [00:38:34] (29 seconds)  #LifeAintFair

And if you wanna see the supreme example of that, of what happens in this world, look at the cross where the most beautiful and pure and just and good person ever to walk the earth was tortured to death in a miscarriage of justice where all the bad happened to him who was most good. [00:39:03] (24 seconds)  #CrossRevealsInjustice

When things go wrong, and they do and they will, I mean, in families, and communities, and churches, and countries, stuff goes wrong and people screw up and and sometimes a whole bunch of things go wrong all at the same time. Things go wrong. It is easy to say, okay, who's to blame? Who should lose their job? But do we also think to ask the question that Jesus has in mind here? [00:41:48] (27 seconds)  #BeyondBlame

In all of this ugly and broken and screwed up as it is, where's the opportunity to show and manifest the goodness and the glory of the living God? Where's the opportunity to do his work in this? That God's will really is done on earth. Do we ask that question? [00:42:14] (25 seconds)  #FindGodsOpportunity

It's almost like Jesus is going out of his way not to answer the question the way the disciples framed it, but to try to change their focus. Y'all are focused on whose fault is this. I wanna point you to the power of God to change this situation, and to heal, and to renew, and to save. [00:41:01] (21 seconds)  #JesusHealsBrokenness

Neither this man nor his parents sinned, here's an opportunity for me to do the will and the work of God right here. The situation is what it is. It's broken. It's chaotic. It's not the way God originally intended when he created the world and called it good. He didn't want this sort of thing to happen. And here's Jesus and he says, and I'm going to set this broken thing right. That's what I do. [00:41:23] (25 seconds)  #ChurchAsHandsAndFeet

And that's when the church became and showed itself to be a sacramental sign in this world through which the work of God was happening. That's what we talk about being the hands and feet of Christ sometimes. A physical sign through which God is working. Jesus wants to change the way we see. To change the way we see ourselves and our situations and our lives. [00:47:59] (28 seconds)  #HeavenMeetsEarth

And that might seem strange to us because the way we've been raised in the culture that we've been raised in, but the Lord delights to bring the heavenly and the earthly together in the most intimate ways. He delights to work through these unexpected signs. And when he works through any way he works to give his grace to his people, what is required of us is faith. [00:34:11] (25 seconds)  #FaithInAction