A Pool Called Sent

When life has stalled and everyone around you seems to have the wind in their sails, Jesus doesn’t hand you a map. He hands you a direction.

There’s a word sailors use that I think about a lot. Becalmed.

It’s what happens when the wind simply stops. The sails are up, the crew is ready, and you are going absolutely nowhere. Meanwhile, other boats have the wind in their sails.

If you’ve had a season like that, you’ll know it isn’t dramatic. Your friends get engaged, get promoted, buy the house, start the thing. You like their photos, and you mean it. Mostly. Then you put your phone down and your life is exactly where it was on Monday.

That’s a confronting place to be. It’s also a lonely one.

A man on the side of the road

John chapter 9 opens with Jesus walking down the street with his disciples. Sitting on the side of that road is a man who was born blind.

Everyone else is moving. He’s stationary. Everyone else is heading somewhere. He can’t see where to go.

The first thing out of the disciples’ mouths is a question: “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

That question doesn’t move him one centimetre. It just gives everyone someone to blame. Our world loves to hand you someone to blame for the pain, the trauma, the inadequacy. But blame has never yet got a stuck person moving.

Jesus’ answer is wonderfully blunt: “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents.” Not everything has a neat reason. We live in a broken world where God’s will is not done most of the time, and sometimes the hard thing just happened. Searching for the meaning in your tragedy might actually be delaying your healing.

But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He pivots: “…but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” The blindness may not have had a purpose. With God, it was about to become an opportunity.

Mud on your comfort

Then Jesus does something I’m fairly sure wouldn’t pass a modern health and safety audit. He spits on the ground, makes mud, and puts it on the man’s eyes.

Until that moment, the man was blind, but he was also comfortable. He had a problem, but he didn’t have a “now” need. He knew his spot on the road.

Mud on your eyes changes that. You can’t just sit there with mud on your face. Something has to happen. God loves you too much to leave you where you are, and sometimes that love feels a lot like mud.

Then the instruction: go wash in the pool of Siloam. John pauses the story to tell us what Siloam means. Sent.

You’ve been looking for vision

The man has no vision, quite literally. Jesus doesn’t fix his eyes on the spot. He sends him to a place called Sent.

It’s the same idea behind the word apostle: a sent one, someone set apart for a mission. So to wash yourself in Siloam is to wash yourself in mission.

I think Jesus is saying to this man, and to a lot of us, “You’ve been looking for vision. What you really need is mission.”

We’re a generation looking for vision without looking for mission. We want to see the whole road before we take a step. We want clarity, a five-year plan and a strong sense of calling, and we’d quite like it before Tuesday. So we sit by the road waiting to see, when the instruction was to go.

What does going look like in an ordinary week? It might be the neighbour you keep meaning to have over for dinner. The friend who is even more becalmed than you are. The moment you realise your life is about more than you, something shifts. God gives vision to people who carry his mission.

While it is day

There’s another line in this passage I can’t shake: “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work.”

That isn’t a guilt trip. It’s an invitation with a clock on it. God needs you moving. God needs you living your life, not watching it from the kerb.

And no, this isn’t about earning anything. You’re saved by grace, full stop. But the same grace that saves you also sends you. You weren’t rescued to sit on the side of the road.

So if you’re becalmed right now, here’s my encouragement. Don’t spend the whole season asking who sinned. Don’t wait until you can see the whole road. Let God put a little mud on your comfort, then get up and walk to Sent.

The man in John 9 didn’t get his sight sitting where he’d always sat. He got it on the way, at the pool, because he went.

Wash yourself in mission, friend. If you will, God will give you vision. And one day you’ll look up and realise the wind is back in your sails.

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