I was the beggar in the corner blind from birth. I sat like that all my days in torn stinking clothes. The children who walked by were afraid just to look at me. I was repulsive to the money changers; the priests told eachother I was unclean and unfit for charity. Truely I was unfit for many things. I was abused by the young adults, abused and shoved even though I was just trying to get from one point to the next. I never cried, though, those sad eyes had forgotten how to do that years ago. I didn't cry even though I was the ridicule of the other beggars. I was the beggar of beggars, hard and stiff of body and heart. Afterall there is no room in this world for the tender.
Day by day I would sit beside the pool. Each day I was more forgotten, save the stench of my existence. My life faded like the ink of a well-used pen. I sat there because they said the waters were stirred from time to time. After 30 years I began to doubt it, doubt it very much. I began to realize that suffering was my wont in life. Cursed were my eyes from birth, and there was no one to help me into the pool if such a stirring ever occured. "Healing!" Such words are for fools and dreamers. If I were to fall into those waters I would sink to the bottom and just become another clump of mud on the bottom of the pool and one less stinking body to clean off the streets, two less hands reaching for the smallest donation as not to starve. Nobody cared about me. Yes, it was my wont to suffer.
So why bother sitting by the pool do you ask? There's no good answer to that question. In all my life all I wanted was to see, yet every morning I woke knowing that seeing the sun was even farther out of reach than the pool. All my life I had heard that the only way I could see the sun was to touch the water in the pool. How can you imagine the sun without seeing it? When I was younger they said it was like a blazing ball of fire in the sky. But what is fire; what is the sky; and what does a ball look like? That's why I sat at the pool. In hope saturated with doubt I waited to see the sun. And every day my heart got blacker and blacker matching my field of view.
One day I stretched out my hand to get money from passers-by. The priests said I shouldn't work on the Sabbath, but don't you get get hungry every day? About that time I heard some men talking. As I listened to them I realized they were talking about me. They didn't talk like normal men. They didn't hurl insults; they just asked strange questions. Suddenly one of them came to me. I could hear his footsteps coming towards me. Had I known that man as I know him now I would have been filled with such wonder and love that I would have laid my face down and given him my complete allegience. He placed a hand beneath my arm and gently lifted me up. With his other hand he lifted my chin. How could I sense the deep compassion that welled from inside this man; I don't know, but no one had purposely touched me since I was a child. What he did next startled me. He lifted my eyelids one by one and packed my eyes with what seemed to be mud. The grittiness stung my eyes, and I wanted to be angry. He calmed me with a kind voice. "Wash."
I stumbled like the blind beggar that I was to the pool to rinse my eyes. In my state I stumbled and fell in. Head below water I washed my eyes feeling so strange inside like the water wasn't just cleaning my eyes and body, but seeping inside and actually rubbing my heart. It fealt like years and years of rubbish was being cleaned away. No, I can't describe it, but as I remained under water it finally dawned on me that this renewall of my heart is what the stranger had meant by "wash".
Suddenly I was overcome by an instant rush of dizziness and shock that I fell backward thrashing about in the water. A scream escaped my lips, and then my mouth just widened on my face. I had just opened my eyes!
Making my way to the edge of the pool I saw what I had wanted to see all my life. I looked up from the pool, my clothes drenched but clean, my purified heart beating hard; I looked up and stared right into the face of the Son. It was he who had made my eyes to see. No, he had made my heart to see.
People used to have pity on me, but I consider myself the most fortunate man to live, for the first person I ever saw was Jesus, and my heart recognized him. Thousands have been born seeing yet do not recognize the Lord when they see him, even those who are looking for him. Sometimes it takes a blind man to find what everyone else is looking for.
Those looking for him were angry at him for working on the Sabbath. I could relate with Jesus; I used to beg for food to be fed, and the Lord was fed by doing the good deeds of his Father. Can you blame a guy for getting hungry on the Sabbath? Nevertheless they called him a sinner. When they asked me I didn't know much. All I knew was that I once was blind, but now I could see. When I defended him they threw me out of the Temple for being one of his disciples. I laughed with all my heart with gladness to be called a disciple of Jesus the Son of God.
Those same men later killed him. My mourning was short because the same man who gave me sight is the same man who rose from the grave 3 days after his death. And now these eyes that used to be blind are always narrow with a smile looking heavenward for the day that they rest on his figure again forever.
My name is Stephen James and I once was that blind beggar. The Lord told me to wash, and that's what I did. Now I can clearly see his face even if for a time we are worlds apart. The time in my life is fading like the ink in this pen. A time will come when I will go to see him face to face. That may be years from now, or I could pass in the night. Regardless of the time I praise the Lord for giving me eyes to see.
Jesus said, "For judgment I have come into this world so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind."
