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lent 4: mud


"lent 4, 2017: mud"
mixed media collage (acrylic paint, found papers, gel medium on stretched canvas)
march, 2017
gregory a. milinovich

mud.  the earthy mixture of spit and soil; such gritty, grimy stuff.  it makes things messy.  it obscures the neat and clean, and blends and blurs into a blemish of browns.

but not when Jesus gets ahold of it.

during lent, our church has been looking at the landscapes of lent, the earthy, everyday objects of our lives that Jesus takes and turns from ordinary to extraordinary.  in this story from john 9, Jesus meets a blind man, and rather than wiping him away, or touching him with a magic wand, or uttering some incantation, he simply spits into the dirt, mixes up some mud, and spreads it on the man's face.  when the man washes away the grit and grime, he's left with nothing other than his sight!  Jesus uses the broken earth - a slimy clump of soil - to bring clarity and wholeness back to the man born blind.

what about us?  how might Jesus be using the brokenness of life - even the messes - to bring a kind of clarity we might not expect?

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