Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

In ancient near eastern culture, lots of people associated sickness and physical disability with sin.

And it's true that occasionally there can be a link like with the demonic, but in many of the healing cases we've seen

there's been no mention of sin at all. Scripture doesn't lay out a direct

consistent cause and effect relationship. It's normal to adopt cultural beliefs as our own and assume they're true, so the cultural mindset of sickness being sin adjacent has impacted even Jesus disciples.

When they meet a blind man, the disciples ask, who's to blame for this man's blindness?

Is he being punished for his own sin or for his parents' sin?

And Jesus says, guess again.

He's blind because this situation is going to be used

to glorify God. This is probably challenging to them

because one of the main reasons this whole way of thinking evolved was as an

attempt to avoid blaming God for suffering. But here, Jesus seems to put the onus on God. He's flipping the script again.

This can be especially hard if we still have a hard time trusting that God is doing what is good

and best. And frankly, it can still be hard even if you know that's true.

Fortunately, God is still at work in this man's story to heal and to redeem.

And guess what particular day it is when God chooses to do this work,

the Sabbath. Remember back on day

281 when we talked about the rules the Pharisees add to God's laws? They call

it building a fence around the law. Remember how they made it illegal to spit on the dirt on the Sabbath

because that was cutting it too close to the job of a brickmason?

So, of course, Jesus throws his leg over that fence and decides that the best way to heal this man is not just to speak it into existence like we know he can, but to spit on the dirt, make mud, and put it on the man's eyes.

This is shocking. He's not just healing on the Sabbath. He's going next level with it.

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