MONDAY, January 4

Jesus replied that neither the man nor his parents had sinned, but today, two millennia later, people still ask the same question.

In my area, we have a blind beggar, an old man who wanders from place to place, bathes little and smells bad, and allegedly gets drunk off the money we give him. Everyone takes care of him, yet no one really does. He does not sleep in our houses, but on the ground outside. He doesn't eat with us, but alone, off to the side.

No one knows how or when he became blind. But all believe that he must have done something wrong to be so poor and alone in a land where community is everything. Without his "people," he has nowhere to go and no one to whom he belongs. In our African tribal community, that is the worst sin of all.

But Jesus makes clear, by his very Incarnation, that this old, blind man does belong and that he deserves love and forgiveness and healing right alongside everyone else in God's very good creation.

Has this blind man sinned? Yes, just as we all have. But by God's grace, he is still loved, still forgiven, still included.

PRAY for the Diocese of Abuja (Province of Abuja, Nigeria)

Ps 85, 87 * 89:1-29; Joshua 3:14-4:7; Ephesians 5:1-20