Helen Keller was only seven years old, blind, deaf and without speech, when her teacher, Anne Sullivan, ran cool
running water over one of Helen’s hands while making motions on the palm of her other hand. It was the breakthrough moment, after a long frustrating isolation, that revealed to Helen the symbolism of words and opened up her ability to learn and to communicate with the outside world.
Jesus used water in a similar way in the remarkable healing of a man in Jerusalem who had been born blind -
John 9. While others used him as a case study for the problem of suffering and sin, Jesus went to work on his healing. He spat on the ground and made a plaster of mud, daubed it on the blind man’s eyes, and sent him to wash in a nearby pool.
