Health Wealth and Blessing

John 9:1-2  As he passed by, he saw a man blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 


One common thread that follows a belief in God that for me has always been a clear distortion of truth is the notion that faith means health, wealth and material blessings. The presumption of the disciples seeing this man born blind was that it was the natural result of someones sin. It was as if they thought of God as punishing one person for the sin of another. With Jesus the blessing is an internal blessing. We can endure many hardships in our lives but we always have the internal blessing if Jesus is our focus, our center. 


I think of the song, by someone that I don't know, that my grandchildren used to sing with the line "I'm a material girl in a material world."  I think that is the basic attitude of American society. We are just material people in a material world and the more material we have the more important we are. Our value is external when the greatest treasure the world has ever known is internal in our spirit. Jesus did heal human bodies and provide material needs at times, but always he focused on being right with God. I'm not one to deny my physical needs, but if I had to eliminate one or the other my physical needs would be the first to go.


To me I was born blind, not physically, but i was blind to my spiritual need. I understand the line from Amazing Grace, "was blind but now I see". I know I don't want to be physically blind, but the world became so much more beautiful when my spiritual blindness was healed taht I think I would choose physical blindness before a return to my spiritual blindness.