Midday on a Wednesday tends to come with questions. Someone wants an answer you don’t have yet. A meeting runs long and you realise you can’t explain half of what you’re supposed to understand. Maybe somewhere underneath it all there’s a bigger question too, the one about faith, and the quiet fear that if you can’t defend it perfectly, maybe it isn’t really yours.
John 9 tells the story of a man who got a lot of questions he couldn’t answer.
He had been blind from birth. Jesus spat on the ground, made clay, put it on his eyes, and sent him to wash in the pool of Siloam. He went, he washed, and he came back seeing. That’s the whole miracle, told in a couple of verses. The rest of the chapter, almost forty verses, is people interrogating him about it.
His neighbours ask how it happened. The Pharisees ask. They call in his parents, who are too frightened to say much. Then they call him back a second time and press harder:
“Give God the praise: we know that this man is a sinner. He answered and said, Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.” (John 9:24–25, KJV)
I love how honest that is. He doesn’t pretend to have the theology sorted. He doesn’t win the argument. He just tells them what he knows: I couldn’t see, and now I can. Everything else he’s still working out.
You don’t need every answer
A lot of us carry a quiet pressure to have faith figured out before we’re allowed to speak about it. We think we need answers for every hard question, a reply ready for every sceptic, or at least a tidy story with no loose ends.
The man in John 9 had none of that. He didn’t even know where Jesus was. But he had one true thing, and he held on to it while learned people leaned on him. That one thing was enough to be a witness.
Maybe today your one thing is small. Jesus met me in a hard season. I prayed and something in me grew quieter. I read a Gospel and someone looked back at me from the page. You don’t have to make it bigger than it is. “One thing I know” is a perfectly good place to stand at midday.
Found after being pushed out
The story doesn’t end with a clever answer. It ends with the man being thrown out of the synagogue. His honesty costs him his place.
Then comes one of the tenderest lines in the Gospel:
“Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God?” (John 9:35, KJV)
Jesus heard, and Jesus went looking. The first time, the man was found blind by the road. The second time, he was found standing outside, rejected for telling the truth. Both times Jesus came to him.
If you’ve ever felt pushed out, misunderstood at work, brushed aside in a conversation, or quietly left out at church, notice that Jesus doesn’t wait for you to find your way back in. He comes and finds you. And when He does, the man finally gets the answer he didn’t have: “Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him” (John 9:38).
He started with one thing he knew. He ended up knowing the One who did it.
For the rest of today
Before you go back to the questions this afternoon, try this:
- Name your one thing. What has Jesus actually done for you, however small? Say it to Him in a sentence.
- Let the rest stay open. You’re allowed to say “I don’t know yet” about the things you don’t know.
- Remember who goes looking. If today pushes you to the edge of a room, Jesus hears about it, and He comes to find you.
Lord Jesus, I don’t have all the answers, and some days the questions feel louder than my faith. But one thing I know: You have opened my eyes to things I couldn’t see before. Hold me to that this afternoon. And when I feel pushed out, find me like You found him. Amen.