Dirt and Spittle

John 9:6-7

“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”

Mark Twain

Terry and I have become fascinated with a new craze; building homes out of shipping containers.  There are shows popping up on cable channels like HGTV and DIY showing how people can build livable spaces, very inexpensively, out of old shipping containers. It’s very creative, and we are beginning to imagine the day when we have a home made from old shipping containers.

Most come from China, where we import everything from iPhones to the cheap toys found in your happy meals. Once they arrive, China doesn’t want them back, so we’ve begun to assemble shipping container graveyards. There is one here in Bradley. Ten years ago, no one would have thought about using a shipping container to build a home. Until one day, someone sat in an office looking at the growing stack of shipping containers, and began to wonder what in the world are we are going to do with all these square, metal tubes. Shazaam – container homes. 

Why mention this? Because this creativity is implanted in us by the God who is creative. The God who makes something out of nothing. The God who looks around, and as N.T. Wright describes; “uses the raw materials of earth to create something brand new that will restore and redeem the chaos we find ourselves in.” Using what is around us to make something brand new.  

Ken Wytsma in his book Create vs. Copy says: “If creativity is part of the image of God in us, imagination is the divine spark that unleashes it.” I’ve seen examples of this all over the last couple of weeks in our country, and at home.  The faculty from colleges, universities, and teachers in elementary to high school have had to prepare to go fully online, and students all over the country have begun to experience online instruction for the first time. Videos are popping up all over social media platforms, including the one at the end of this post.  Don't you wish you would have invested in Zoom last month.  This site is being used in ways no one imagined last month, from virtual classrooms to meet-ups with friends, families, counseling sessions, and churches.  March Madness brackets have been created with no basketball, distilleries are making hand sanitizer and automobile plants are manufacturing ventilators. There are new things being created every day. These are being birthed out of the chaos we find ourselves in. But the ingenuity and creativity that is coming to live is creating things in brand new ways for our communities. Things that we didn’t need two months ago, and things we wouldn’t have imagined.

It’s the way we work because it’s the way God works. God isn’t afraid of the situation we find ourselves in. He isn’t surprised by the things that are happening around us. As a matter of fact, God enables us to look around and see what we can use to create something new out of the raw materials that are already here.  

It’s what Jesus did when healing the man born blind. He looked around, saw dirt, spat in it creating mud, rubbed it on the man’s eyes, and then instructed him to go wash in the pool of Siloam.  Jesus was creating something brand new out of what was already there. But the man wasn’t healed yet, was he? Because Jesus included the blind man in the healing process. He instructed him to go wash in the pool. It wasn’t until after the blind man washed his own eyes that he could see.  

Why didn’t Jesus just heal him? Because I think he wanted to include him in the healing process, just like he wants to include us in the process of restoring our community and world from the moment we find ourselves in.    

What will this look like on the other side? I’m repeating myself: I have no idea. I can tell you that God is looking at the raw materials that are already here, creating something brand new. And the best part of this is God includes us in the process. God can work alone, but like he included the servants at a wedding and the disciples at the feeding of the four and five thousand; he includes us too. If we can imagine shipping containers turned into homes, imagine what God can do with a little dirt and spittle.

So, look around today. Maybe the answer is in the dirt.

Grace and peace friends.

https://youtu.be/nDIJz6zzHNU