Opening Prayer

Dear Jesus, thank you for every morning this week when we sat together and heard your Word. Help us hold on to what you’ve shown us. Amen.

This Week’s Big Picture

All week long, we heard four different Bible readings. A shepherd boy. A poem about sheep. A letter about darkness and light. A man born blind. Four stories — but one thread running through every single one of them.

God sees what we cannot.

On Monday, we met David. His own father forgot about him. Seven brothers walked past the prophet Samuel, and God said no to every one. Then they dragged in the kid from the sheep field — the one nobody thought to invite — and God said, “That’s my king.” People looked at the outside. God looked at the heart.

On Tuesday, that same David — now grown — wrote Psalm 23. He said God is like a shepherd who walks with you through dark valleys where you can’t see the path. The sheep don’t lead the shepherd. The shepherd leads the sheep. And God’s goodness and mercy don’t just follow politely behind us — they chase us down.

On Wednesday, Paul told the Ephesians the hardest truth and the best truth in the same breath. “You were darkness.” Not in the dark — you were the dark itself. But then: “Now you are light in the Lord.” God didn’t give us a candle and say figure it out. Christ shone on us and made us into something brand new.

On Thursday, Jesus met a man who had never seen a single thing in his whole life. Everyone blamed somebody — “Who sinned?” Jesus said nobody sinned. Then he made mud, smeared it on the man’s eyes, and created brand-new sight. The man who couldn’t see ended up seeing the most important thing of all: that Jesus is Lord. The religious experts who could see everything? They turned out to be the most blind of all.

What This Means

Here’s what’s hiding underneath all four stories: we are the ones who cannot see, and God is the one who sees for us.

David didn’t march into the house and say, “Pick me!” He was outside with sheep. God went and got him. The sheep in Psalm 23 don’t know the way through the valley. The shepherd does. The Ephesians couldn’t flip their own light switch — Christ had to shine on them. The blind man couldn’t open his own eyes. Jesus had to make new ones from mud, like God making Adam from dust at the very beginning.

Do you see the pattern? In every single story, God acts first. God sees first. God moves first. We are the sheep, the blind, the darkness, the forgotten kid in the field. And God is the shepherd, the healer, the light, the one who says, “That’s my child.”

And that’s not embarrassing. That’s the best news in the world. Because if it were up to us to find God, we’d never make it. We can’t see well enough. We wander too much. We’re too stuck in the dark. But God doesn’t wait for us to figure it out. He comes looking. He always comes looking.

That’s exactly what happened in your baptism. God poured water on your head — like Samuel pouring oil on David’s. He made you his own — like the shepherd claiming his sheep. He shone his light on you — like Christ waking up the sleeper. He opened your eyes — like Jesus finding the man everyone else threw out. All four stories, all at once, all for you. Before you did a thing.

Let’s Talk About It

Eberley: In every story this week, the people who thought they could see clearly turned out to be the most wrong — Samuel picked the tall brother, the Pharisees rejected Jesus, the disciples blamed the blind man’s sin. Why is being certain you’re right sometimes the most dangerous place to be? What does that mean for how we approach our own judgments about people?

Eberley: All four readings are assigned together for the Fourth Sunday in Lent — Laetare Sunday, the “rejoicing” Sunday. Why would the Church put these texts about blindness and darkness on the day set aside for joy?

Sonja: Which story from this week was your favorite — David, Psalm 23, the light and darkness, or the blind man? What part do you remember best?

Sonja: In all four stories, God came to someone who needed help. If you could ask God to come help you with something right now, what would it be?

Dahlia & Freddy: Let’s see what you remember! Monday — who did God choose to be king? (David, the littlest!) Tuesday — who is our Shepherd? (God!) Wednesday — who turned on the light for us? (Jesus!) Thursday — what did Jesus put on the blind man’s eyes? (Mud!) Who did all the work in every story — us or God? (God did!)

Remember This

We can’t see, but God can — and he came to find us.

Closing Prayer

Thank you, God, for this whole week of hearing your Word together. Thank you for choosing us like you chose David. Thank you for walking with us like a shepherd through the dark valleys. Thank you for shining your light on us when we were nothing but darkness. Thank you for opening our blind eyes to see Jesus. None of it was our doing. All of it was yours. Keep us in your light today, this weekend, and always. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Try This

Family dinner question: Go around the table and each person answer: “What’s one thing God helped you see this week that you couldn’t see on your own?” It could be something about a friend, about yourself, about God — anything. Practice being people who admit they need the Shepherd’s eyes more than their own.