"Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, "I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life." John 8:12

Blind

 "Never, never, never give up."  Winston Churchill

             I once saw a curly-headed young man get arrested after a high school basketball game.  He was one of those good-looking, popular guys with the reputation of being a "bad boy," and was known as someone who. . . well, did all the stuff bad boys were known to do. Seeing this arrest was shocking to me, a "good girl" church-goer all my life.  My mother even noted in my baby book that I had first attended church when I was ten days old, and I'd rarely missed a Sunday since.  Up until that point, the only arrests I'd ever witnessed were on TV.  I remember gawking, gasping, looking on in horror. . . and feeling totally, self-righteously superior to this young man who would, I was sure, turn out to be one of those losers who wasted his life.

            In John chapter nine, we read the account of Jesus healing a blind man, and of all the trouble this brought to the formerly blind man, his parents, and to Jesus. The rulers of the temple and the Pharisees were not happy that this "work" had been done on the Sabbath, and they were even less happy about the fact that this miracle had been done by the relative newcomer, Jesus.  To the formerly blind man, they pridefully asserted, "You are His disciple, but we are Moses' disciples.  We know that God spoke to Moses; as for this fellow, we do not know where He is from"( vss. 28-29).  But these men who knew their ancestor, Moses, so well were in need of a little instruction.  And the formerly blind man gave it to them.

            "Why this is a marvelous thing, that you do not know where He is from; yet He has opened my eyes!  Now we know that God does not hear sinners; but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does His will, He hears him.  Since the world began it has been unheard of that anyone opened the eyes of one who was born blind.  If this Man were not from God, He could do nothing" ( vss. 30-33).

            As you might imagine, this didn't go over so well with those self-righteous rulers, and as a result, the formerly blind man was thrown out of the temple.  Later, after hearing Jesus state that He had come into the world so that those who did not see, could see, some of the Pharisees asked Him, "Are we blind also?" (vs. 40).  Jesus replied, "If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, 'We see.'  Therefore your sin remains" (vs. 41).

            By being so certain that they already saw and knew all there was to know about God, those learned men were blind to how much more there was to see.  Pride in what they knew blinded them to what they could have known and experienced.

            Obviously, looking back to my experience of watching that arrest, I don't need to tell you that I was exactly like those Pharisees. It took many years of personal and moral failure on my part for smug, self-righteous me to recognize that everything I'd learned in Sunday school and church all those years would not save me.  When the scales of pride finally fell from my eyes, I recognized myself as being just as much, or perhaps even more in need of a Savior than that young man had been!  Thank you, Jesus, for being patient with me until I could begin to see how blind I had been.

            Oh, and what happened to that young man, Tom, and the young woman, Teri, he later married?  I'll let him tell you in the words he e-mailed to my husband (they grew up on the same little dead-end street), which Tom has given me permission to use.

 "I wanted Teri to go to church with me.  I was so convicted about my lifestyle, living with her out of wedlock, I persuaded her to go with me.  She didn't have a relationship with Jesus until that night we walked into the Assembly of God Church.  WE both got saved that night.  I was drunk when I walked in and I left sober and saved.  Praise God!!!!!"    

                                                                                                ~Tom Camp                         

            So what has redemption made of this young man?  Not only a fine Christian musician, but also one of the most powerful preachers of the Gospel in our area!  Oh, and there's that little thing about Tom and Teri being the parents of one of the most widely known and celebrated Christian musicians of our day, Jeremy Camp.

            "Never, never, never give up," on anyone, or assume them to be beyond redemption no matter how far gone in the world (or in Pharisee-ism!) they seem to be.  Never, never, never underestimate the marvelous things God can and will do with someone who recognizes and admits his or her own blindness, and like that formerly blind man, says, "Lord, I believe!"    

Daye Phillippo/ October 2010

 Jesus saves! Yes, He does!  Copy and paste the following link in your browser to hear Jeremy's recent song titled simply, "Jesus Saves".  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=724JLC6FmRo