Mud Pies, and other delicacies—

My two-year-old granddaughter likes to play in the dirt.  (Of course, so does her grandmother, but I rationalize my behavior by presumptuously calling it “gardening”.)

As a doting grandma, I post this photo with her mother’s permission:

Another recently shared video showed her working in the dirt, and when asked what she was doing, she replied, “I’m making honey!”

Now, THAT would be a bit of a creative miracle.  But then, come to think of it, our original form likewise came from the dirt.

Out of the mouths of babes…..

I read another’s comment that perhaps this is also what Jesus had in mind when He dealt with a blind man–

Then he spit on the ground, made mud with the saliva, and spread the mud over the blind man’s eyes.  He told him, “Go wash yourself in the pool of Siloam”… So the man went and washed and came back seeing!

I have a friend who was born blind, which for him means that his optic nerve was not fully formed.  It would take a creative miracle to bring him sight.

In the Garden, God formed man from the dust/clay.  Now Jesus uses the dirt of the very place where the man was standing to form mud, put it on the man’s eyes, then wash it off.  And—POW—a creative miracle happens.  Not just a healing, but possibly more along the lines of a created optic nerve where once there was none.

Yet another way that Jesus is giving us clues to His identity as God. 

And not only that, it is significant to me that Jesus didn’t go “somewhere special” to get holy dirt.  On the contrary, He used the dirt the man was standing in, nothing special, just his everyday-this-is-where-I-live dirt, you know, the kind we like to sweep out of the house…or under the rug so no one can see it (so we think.) 

Anyone who tells me that they couldn’t use a creative miracle in their lives are either lying or half brain dead.  It might not be in a physical sort of way (although at my age, I could use that more and more!) but certainly in our circumstances, our relationships, our emotions, so many disconnections and frustrations and hang-ups, past shame or present fears.  How about the “love and trust” connection that was never fully formed during childhood?

God is able to work the creative miracle we need.

And many times He uses the very dirt at our feet.

John 9:6,7  Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.