Piaget’s theory of object permanence describes a child’s ability to recognise that objects continue to exist even when they are not in sight. Babies do not initially understand that what they cannot see still exists: for them, seeing really is believing, and therefore in the minds of young babies, the world only consists of what they can see in front of them at any given moment. It’s why a baby can seem in distress if he cannot see a person or toy.

Most babies move to the recognition that something or someone is still there even if they cannot see the object at around nine months. That’s when the game of hiding an object and playing ‘peek-a-boo!‘ can become so popular, eliciting giggles and anticipation rather than distress.

Sadly, it takes adults much longer usually to apply this concept to the spiritual realm. So often, if we do not see or feel God’s presence, we fret that He has abandoned or forsaken us. If He is not answering our prayers favourably and immediately, we assume He is no longer there. If life is difficult and full of trials, we believe that God has walked out on us.

When we play the game of ‘Hide And Seek’ with children, they are notoriously bad at hiding, often hiding in plain view (‘my eyes are closed, so you can’t see where I am, Grandma!’) Isaiah 45:15 talks of the God who hides Himself, and He can do this far better than a child! There are periods in life when God is not in plain view. Do we, at those times, assume He has walked out on us, abandoned us, forsaken us, left us alone and defenceless? Are we like babies who have no concept of object permanence? Or do we learn to trust He is there, even when we cannot see Him, even when our feelings tell us one thing but the facts tell us another?

Psalm 22 starts with feelings of forsakenness. God seems a long way away to David. But he balances these feelings with the truth he knows from Israel’s history and learns to both pour out his feelings to God and walk in trust adn faith, ultimately moving to a place of confidence in God’s future deliverance because of what He has done in the past.

‘Believing is seeing’ is the order of life in the spiritual realm. Growing up means understanding an object doesn’t vanish just because we can’t see it at this precise moment. Neither does God.

John’s sixth sign was the healing of a blind man which led to confrontation, teaching and insights about spiritual vision (John 9:1-41). Jesus healed many blind people throughout His ministry (see Matthew 9, Matthew 15:30, Luke 7:21, Luke 18:35-42, Mark 8:22-26 and Mark 10:46-62), but this account in John’s gospel shows us much more than the miraculous healing of one man.

The chapter starts with Jesus and His disciples encountering a man who was born blind, which prompts the disciples to ask the question “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2) This question reflects our deep-seated belief that something has gone wrong with the world, that it is not how it was originally meant to be, and reflects our understnding that sin and misfortune must be connected. Whilst it is true that personal sin can be connected to suffering, Jesus shows us that the correlation between the two is not so simple. He says that this happened so that the works of God may be displayed, reminding us that God can bring good out of all our suffering.

The healing itself reminds us that Jesus uses the ordinary (mud, spit, saliva) to do the miraculous and points not only to physical healing but how this can lead to testimony. The man repeatedly tells his story of what Jesus has done for him, first of all to the crowds and then to the religious leaders and Pharisees. We are called to do the same: to tell the story of what God has done for us. (Ps 107:2) Personal testimony is hugely important. We may not have all the answers, just as this man could not answer all the questions, but we know what God has done for us!

The Pharisees are frustrated that this miracle happened on the Sabbath and call Jesus a sinner and the man ‘steeped in sin.‘ Yet the man’s spiritual eyes have been opened, for he knows that a mere man could not have done this healing. Jesus seeks him out again and this time asks if he believes in the Son of Man. On learning that Jesus is the Son of Man, the man’s spiritual eyes acknowledge Jesus as Lord and his faith journey can really start.

John shows us the hostility and opposition that this miracle arouses as religious people refuse persistently to believe the evidence of the works Jesus is doing. We do not simply need our physical sight restoring; we need to see and understand who Jesus is and what He does. When this happens, then we can receive eternal life and become a disciple of Jesus.

Dave spoke this morning from Matt 15:30, which tells us ‘Great crowds came to him, bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute and many others, and laid them at his feet; and he healed them.‘ Time and time again during the lifetime of Jesus, we see great numbers being drawn to Him; He was hugely popular because He loved people (Matt 9:36), met their needs and taught them. (Matt 13:34) We do well to learn from His example so that we can see the church grow as people are drawn to Jesus.

Jesus associated more with ordinary people than with the rich or religious leaders. He truly loved people. We as a church need to be loving others more than we love ourselves. Heb 13:2 reminds us that we must show hospitality to all and must welccome all. People need to feel love and acceptance before they will open up to us. Even if we do not approve of people’s actions, we can still accept them as they are, because this is how God treats everyone.

All needs were met by Jesus, regardless of whether the people then chose to follow Him or not. He met needs without expecting anything in return, and we too need to be prepared to give selflessly to other people.

Jesus taught profound truths in simple ways. We must be prepared to do the same, answering people’s questions as they raise them and letting others set the pace with what they ask. We need to be able to explain the gospel in simple, straightforward words, not hiding behind religious vocabulary, but explaning things simply to help people grow in an understanding of the things of God. We have to be be prepared to be available to God to use to reach out to others. Each of us has a part to play in a growing church.

A scroll was a roll of parchment for writing on; the Scriptures (writings) were originally written on scrolls. Normally, a scroll would not be eaten, but on different occasions in the Bible, we are given the vivid picture of God’s people being told to eat a scroll to symbolise eating and digesting the very words of God. Perhaps the most vivid image of this comes in Ezekiel 2:3-3:9, when Ezekiel is told to eat a scroll containing God’s words of lament and mourning and woe and that this was ‘as sweet as honey in my mouth.’ (Ezek 3:3) The psalmist described God’s words as being like honey (see Ps 19:9-10, Ps 119:103), reminding us of the goodness of God’s words, but in the context of Ezekiel’s experience, we see that the prophet was literally tasting God’s judgment upon Israel and the nations.

John has a similar experience in Revelation 10, when he is told to take and eat a little scroll: “Take it and eat it. It will turn your stomach sour, but ‘in your mouth it will be as sweet as honey.’” (Rev 10:9) John is seeing the remaining judgments of God on the nations in fulfilment of the many prophecies He gave during the Old and New Testament eras. Presumably the fact that there is still much judgment to come is what turns his stomach sour.

Doubtless John was delighted with the fact of this revelation from God which revealed that God was taking over His kingdom and would defeat His enemies. But as he pondered and reflected on the nature of this revelation (God’s wrath, the revelation of the man of sin, Satan’s kingdom, the worship of the beast, the persecution of Israel, the manifestation of man’s heart and rebellion, etc.), the message of the book became bitter in his stomach—it gave him spiritual heartburn.

Likewise, today we are invited to come to the Word of God and feed on its truth. As we study prophecy and contemplate the nature of our times, we become more confident that the return of the Lord draws ever nearer and in this we rejoice, but these are days of ever-increasing spiritual darkness, rebellion and apostasy. This saddens the heart and greatly increases the burdens and pressures of life. It causes bitterness of soul.

The wider application of ‘eating’ God’s words comes as we think about Biblical meditation on the word of God, how we must be like the cow chewing the cud, constantly reading and digesting God’s word until it becomes a very part of us. Eugene Peterson, in his book ‘Eat This Book’, says, “The Bible is a most comforting book; it is also a most discomfiting book. Eat this book; it will be sweet as honey in your mouth; but it will also be bitter to your stomach. You can’t reduce this book to what you can handle; you can’t domesticate this book to what you are comfortable with. You can’t make it your toy poodle, trained to respond to your commands.” It’s clear from Revelation 10 that there is much in the Bible we find hard to digest and understand, but Paul reminds us that all Scripture is God-breathed and useful to us. (2 Tim 3:16-17) Perhaps we need to dig deeper and keep on chewing over God’s words in thoughtful meditation.

I recently organised a surprise baby shower for my daughter-in-law, and found the experience of keeping secrets from her stressful to say the least. My son knew only that they had to be in a certain place at a certain time; I dare not tell my grandchildren about the surprise in case they gave my secret away. It was only at the right time that the plan could be unveiled, and thankfully everyone invited kept the secret and it was a successful party time!

We often think of secrets and mysteries in this way: knowledge that is hidden from us. There are many things we do not fully know or understand; sometimes, at the ‘right time’, we may find answers to our questions (she found it frustrating not quite knowing where they were going, what to wear and so on; my son could not understand why I would not tell him how this event was going to affect the rest of the weekend, but that was because friends of his were travelling from the Midlands to the party and I did not know what their long-term plans were!) Sometimes, we never really understand the answers to our questions; maybe we just cannot comprehend the answers we get.

The Bible frequently talks about the mystery of Christ and of the gospel (see Romans 16:25, 1 Corinthians 2:7, Ephesians 3:4-9), but this is not a secret as such, simply a revelation of God that became clear at a certain point in history. Much of the book of Revelation seems mysterious to us, including the ‘seven thunders’ in Revelation 10, which John was told to seal up and not write down. (Why mention something if you cannot explain it?!) We may well feel frustrated about the many things we do not understand about God’s ways, and we often ask questions about why God, the God of righteousness and holiness, allows evil to go unpunished and His own people to be crushed and broken on every hand. We still do not have answers that fully satisfy us as we read the Bible, but we are reassured that “God by His Son, the Heir of all things, will wrest the government of the world from the iron grasp of Satan, confine him as a prisoner in the abyss for 1,000 years, finally casting him into the lake of fire for eternity, and then rule and reign in manifested power and glory” (J. Hampton Keathley III), as the rest of the book makes clear. Sometimes, we really do have to wait and see…