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Walk humbly with our God
Fourth Sunday of Lent, March 26, 2017
Jesus spat on the ground, made clay with the saliva, and smeared the clay on the blind man’s eyes. He said to him, “Go and wash in the Pool of Siloam.” He went and washed, and the man who had been blind from birth came back, able to see.  – From John 9
I was the youngest member of the 1962 life-saving class at Lincoln Lakes. Just an eighth-grade “junior” life-saver, but the “seniors,” in the same class, learned the same skills. We sat on the pier together and watched each other practice swimming underwater, get below the drowner, and turn them around so we were behind them. Then we surfaced, put our non-swimming arm over their chest and kept it there to keep them from grabbing us and pulling us down with them in their panic.
I practiced this, and I passed the test.
Two weeks later I went swimming with my friend Gary Brown, and I climbed up on his shoulders and dove into the water.
Shallow water! My head hit the bottom hard. I came up screaming. Mostly unconscious, entirely out of breath … screaming bloody murder. I remember this. And it’s been way more than fifty years.
What I remember best is recognizing the lifeguard running toward us through the water. He was in my class. He was a “senior,” and now he had a summer job. Saving me.
I don’t suppose he was laughing. Yet. He got me up on the shore where both our mothers were also screaming, and the ambulance got me to the hospital, and a couple hours later Dr. Hamm told me I was going to be OK. Years before at my annual physicals, he’d given me play money in a cellophane envelope, a stick of gum, a nickel and two pennies. I was grown now, grown enough to get in trouble diving into shallow water.
Aly thinks I might forget how to swim. I don’t think so. It would be too embarrassing. I want to swim humbly before my God.
All the texts today point toward the land of humility. God and Samuel, listening to each other for years, are so comfortable together. “Fill your horn with oil,” God says, “and be on your way. I am sending you …” Samuel doesn’t even think to question. He heads down to Jesse’s house, to find the new king of Israel.
And what of David, the psalmist and future king? “The Lord is my shepherd.” David knows he’s not in charge, and that’s fine with him. “You prepare a table for me, you anoint my head, my cup runs over. Always your goodness and mercy follow me.”
And is this the normal way of Jesus, to mix his saliva with clay of the earth? It is today. On this day God’s ever-present healing just needs the right mix of water, clay, and Jesus to manifest; and the man blind from birth suddenly can see. Without the humility of Jesus he would still be blind.
Well. If humility is good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me.
We cry out, Lord, to learn from you lessons of walking humbly. Miles and Aly and Jack, their parents and Margaret and I, we are too proud, too ashamed, too sinful to walk this way on our own. But you will restore our souls and lead us in paths of righteousness. And we will dwell in your house forever.
http://www.davesandel.net/category/lent-easter-devotions-2017/
http://www.christiancounselingservice.com/archived_devotions.php?article_id=1581
