"He spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man's eyes."
John 9:6 (NIV)
Nobody asks for the process that changes them. The man in John 9 did not request mud on his face. He did not fill out a form or describe his preferred method of healing. Jesus simply bent down, pressed something cold and strange against his eyes, and told him to go wash. There was no explanation, no warning, and no invitation to weigh in.
The method Jesus chose here was deliberate and deeply rooted. The Greek word for "made" in verse 6 is epoiesen, from poieo, meaning to create or to form. It is the same family of words used for God's creative work. John is not describing a random act. He is showing us a Creator at work, forming something with His hands the way a potter forms clay. Jesus did not heal this man from a distance. He got close, He got low, and He used His hands.
Isaiah 64:8 captures the same picture from a different angle. The prophet writes that we are the clay and God is the potter, that we are all the work of His hand. The Hebrew word for "work" here is ma'aseh, meaning a deed or an act done with purpose and intention. God's shaping of a life is never random. It is never careless. Even when it feels like something unwanted has been pressed against you, the Potter has not lost the plot.
Sound familiar? Most of us have been in a season we would not have chosen. The method felt undignified. The process made no sense from where we were standing. We expected something cleaner, something that looked more like the miracle we had in mind. But the Potter does not always work the way the clay imagines, and the clay does not always recognize what is being made until it comes out of the fire.
The man had a choice at the moment the mud touched his face. He could have wiped it off. He could have walked away from the whole strange encounter before it went any further. He stayed. He let something he did not understand remain on him long enough to be told what to do next. That quiet willingness, that staying put inside a moment that made no sense, was the posture that everything else depended on.
Godseekers, the Potter has not lost His grip on what He is making. The process you are in may not look like healing from where you are standing. It may look like mud. But the one pressing it against your life is the same one who opened blind eyes in Jerusalem, the same one who creates what was never there. Trust the hands that are working. The shape He is forming is worth the process it requires.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, you are the Creator and I am the clay. Some of what you are doing in my life right now I do not understand and did not ask for. Teach me to stay put in the process instead of pulling away from it. Where I have confused discomfort with abandonment, correct that in me. You have not lost the plot. Work in me what only your hands can make. In Jesus' name, Amen.
Personal Reflection
- What process in your life right now feels like mud — uncomfortable, unexplained, and nothing like what you expected healing to look like?
- Where have you been tempted to wipe off what God has placed on you before it has had time to do its work?
Step of Faith
Today, identify one situation you have been resisting or trying to rush past. Sit with it for ten minutes in silence, and ask God to show you what He is forming in it.
