How can you not absolutely fall in love with this passage in John chapt. 9- Truly there is -power in the details- of this account.----For you who love to meditate on Jesus. Think fresh thoughts about Jesus. This passage is for you- Think about Jesus passing through a mob bent on murdering him. Rather than running for his life, he pauses to heal this blind man right outside the temple. Amazing----- J. B. Phillips, the author of one of the modem para-phrases of the Bible, sensed this keenly in his translation work and has written of it.-- -I had deep respect, indeed a great reverence, for the conventional Jesus Christ whom the Church wor-shipped.-- But I was not at all prepared for the unconventional man revealed in those terse Gospels. No one could possibly have invented such a person- this was no puppet-hero built out of the imaginations of adoring admirers. 'This man Jesus,' so briefly described, rang true, sometimes alarmingly true. I be-gan to see now why the religious establishment of those days wanted to get rid of Him at all costs. He was sudden death to pride, pomposity, and pretense.-- -This man could be moved with compassion and could be very gentle, but I could find no trace of the 'Gentle Jesus, meek and mild.' He was quite terrifyingly tough, not in a Bulldog Drummond-James Bond sort of way, but by the sheer strength of a unified and utterly dedicated personality.-- He once -at least- walked unscathed through a murderous crowd. I have known a few, a very, very few, men who could do that. But then I find that this sheer strength was still His after hours of unspeakable agony in the garden of Gethsemane.-