The Cure

I think I might be getting better but this is because if I don't, my sweet neighbor Carolyn is going to send over her cure. Here is the list of ingredients:
Kick-A-Bug Juice- water, honey, apple cider vinegar, garlic, fresh ginger and cayenne pepper. After simmering for 20 minutes, you take a Tablespoon of the liquid and one of the garlic cloves every half hour.
She claims that this healed her relatives who were sick at her house over Thanksgiving. I think it is likely that after the 9th half hour of garlic cloves and that concoction, they convinced Carolyn they were better and then snuck out to check into a hospital. Either that, or the microbes infesting their bodies took one whiff of their hosts' breath after swigging this "juice" and decided to go find a sweeter smelling place to set up shop.

Actually, knowing Carolyn, I bet the concoction really works and if I come down with the flu, I am going to brew some and give it a go. It doesn't seem worth it just for a cold, albeit a pretty nasty one.  However, believe it or not, I have actually heard of stranger cures.

Back in Jesus' day, there was a man who was blind from birth. As far as I can tell from the passage in John 9, the man doesn't ask Jesus to heal him. He has known nothing but blindness and I suppose it doesn't occur to him there might be a better state of existing. But the townspeople, as is the way of so many of us, decide that the man is born blind as punishment- either to him or to his parents. Somebody must have sinned for such a horrible thing to have happened to him. Jesus steps in to quickly dispel that notion. It is not due to sin, he proclaims, but that God's work might be displayed. Then comes the quirkiest cure for blindness I have ever heard of. Jesus spits on the dirt, makes a mud pie, and slaps it on the man's eyes. Next, He tells the man to go wash the mud off in the pool of Siloam.  Siloam means "sent", and I don't think this is insignificant. The man washes off the mud and is cured of his blindness.

Personally I think the mud is a red herring. I think the key to the cure is that the man was sent, and he went. In the act of obeying  a God he couldn't see, he received a gift he hadn't asked for, and seems not to have known he wanted or needed, and ultimately looked upon the face of Jesus. What is so striking is the simple cluelessness of this blind man. When the Pharisees ask him how he was cured, he tells them, "I don't know. This guy Jesus came and stuck mud on my eyes, and told me to wash it off. Then voila, I could see, just like that!"
The Pharisees regard this cure with the same skepticism I regard Carolyn's Kick-A-Bug Juice.
"You big fat liar!" they proclaim, "Why should we believe a sinner blind from birth?" (BTW- as in many of my Biblical explanations, I try to keep the gist of the meaning, but paraphrased. I would always encourage you to check the original source to see if I have attempted to mislead you.)
"The proof is in the pudding," says the ex-blind man, "I was blind and now I am not. Don't you think that means Jesus is at the very least a prophet?"
Then he does the unpardonable sin of being sarcastic with the Pharisees, and their faces turn all red, and they toss him out of the temple, furious that he thinks someone who heals the blind might be more than just your average Joe.

Jesus finds the ex-blind man, tells him who it was that healed him, and the blind man does the only thing anyone should do at such a proclamation. Falls down and worships Him. That is the point at which the cure is complete.

I am hopeful I am on an upswing, because if not, I am going to need to buy another box of tissues. And I may have to go swill some of that Kick A Bug Juice.

John 9: 35-41
³⁵ Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”  ³⁶ “Who is he, sir?” the man asked. “Tell me so that I may believe in him.”
 ³⁷ Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.”
 ³⁸ Then the man said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.
 ³⁹ Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”
 ⁴⁰ Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?”
 ⁴¹ Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.

The Mathematics of Chickens

The introduction she wrote for the moderator to announce her speech tantalized the audience:
"The next speaker will be answering a question that has been asked since time began. She has spent weeks researching the topic, and will now help solve this ancient mystery."
Then Asherel, my shy 13 year old, strode to the lectern and said,
"Why DID the chicken cross the road?"

For the next 5 minutes, she gave a thoughtful and scholarly discourse on exactly what might have tempted the chicken to cross the road. She gave some ancient philosophers' takes on the matter ( e.g. Einstein: Did the chicken cross the road, or did the road move beneath her?") She discussed the sorts of food and habits that may have induced the chicken to cross the road. She mentioned that chickens live in the here and now, with little to no attention to consequences or past successes. She noted that chickens, contrary to what you may think about the implication of their name, are really quite brave.

The coup de force was when she went to the chalkboard to show the mathematical probability of the chicken crossing the road successfully with an average car speed of 55 mph, and a maximum chicken speed of 9 mph, and an average road width. She used her research on chicken vision and when it would have first discerned the car, then the formula rate times time equals distance to calculate how long it would take the car to reach the chicken, and the same formula to determine how fast the chicken would cross the road. She showed objectively with her careful calculations that the thrill seeking chicken would cross the road safely with .2 seconds to spare.

Finally she closed her speech saying really the question was a 2 part conundrum. "Why?" is a question that has never been successfully answered. Who, what, where, and when are objective and easily dispatched, but "Why" is an elusive query that has plagued mankind since time immemorial. The second part of the question can be easily now answered: Did the chicken cross the road? Yes.

As I watched my once shy child return to her seat to laughter and applause, I thought, "She has grown up before my eyes. She is funny and sweet and kind... all of a sudden she is someone I not only love, but really really like."  This is why parenting is worth every wretched, sleep deprived, hand wringing moment. Sometimes they become even more than what you hoped.

I wonder if my heavenly Father looks down on me, and ever smiles to Himself and says, "Wow, she has transformed. I knew it would happen of course, since I know everything, but my my, it is nice to be proven right!" So much of transformation is hidden, elusive, unobserved and unexplainable until suddenly it is there. A soul has ripped across the gulf of disbelief and reached the other side, where Jesus claps and delights, as the forces that might have crushed now whiz harmlessly by.

Deuteronomy 11: 11-12
¹¹ But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. ¹² It is a land the LORD your God cares for; the eyes of the LORD your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end.