The crowd just laughed. Important people don’t like being laughed at. It was getting tense. They dismissed my parents and started on me again. A bunch of them were yelling at me, “Give glory to God! We know that this Jesus is a sinner.” It was because of what dad had done. How he and mum had been brave and trusted me. And because I was just completely over all this bullshit. I had been blind a few days ago and now I could see. And all they cared about were rules! Laws! Appropriate behaviour! It didn’t feel like a single one of them cared about me. But I knew who had. I’d missed it at the time. Misunderstood. But I knew now. So I threw caution to the wind and let rip. “I do not know whether he is a sinner,” I screamed. “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” And they shouted back, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” I just laughed. I couldn’t help myself. The whole situation was insane. They were trying to make red into green, make good into bad, make joy into tears. They wanted me to say I was sorry that I could see and denounce the man who’d brought light into my world. I wasn’t having it. “I told you already, and you wouldn’t listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” They spat at me, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of the great Prophet. We know that God has spoken to the Prophet, but as for this Jesus, we do not even know where he comes from.” I just didn’t care anymore. I knew they’d never listen. So, I looked up, just as my dad had done, and eyeballed the lot of them. “Well, here is a mindbending thing! You do not even know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We all know – and you tell us this – that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has anyone opened the eyes of a 81
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