October 1
October 1
By grace God gives sight to our blind eyes, so that we may see him and the rescuing wisdom of his truth.
We often take the gift of sight for granted. Without this gift our world is dark and the visual glories that God created are closed off to us. You might recall that Luella and I worked at a school for the blind while I was in seminary. Despite all their amazing skills, the boys we worked with had to navigate life with a huge disability. Imagine never seeing the blooms of spring, the stunning multihued glory of a sunset, the gargantuan size of an elephant, the colorful feathers of a parrot, or a full moon guarding the night. Our boys explained to us that being blind is not like closing your eyes, because, when your eyes are closed, you see darkness. No, they told us that being blind is like trying to look out of the back of your head; you see nothing.
For all the beauty of physical sightedness and the sadness of blindness, there is another vision system that is even more important. Your most essential vision system involves the eyes of your heart. When the eyes of your heart are blind, you don’t see the most important things in all of life, and, because you don’t, you don’t live the way you were created to live. Spiritual blindness is one of the horrible effects of sin. Sin blinds us from seeing God and the wisdom of his truth. Because of the entrance of sin into the world and its blinding power, it is only by grace that we are given spiritual eyes to see and ears to hear.
After explaining to his disciples why he speaks in parables, Jesus says, “Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it” (Matt. 13:16–17). He reminds them that they are recipients of the blessing of grace that has opened the eyes and ears of their hearts to see and hear God’s truth clearly. Jesus also tells his disciples that grace has empowered them to see and to hear what God’s people longed for generations to see and hear, but did not.
If you get up tomorrow morning and are blessed to see the morning sun, may it remind you of the spiritual sight and hearing that you have been gifted by grace. May we never forget the magnitude of the gift we have been given. Every day we live, work, and play among people who are tragically blind and do not know it. But we have been touched by Jesus’s healing hands, and we can see and hear. We continue to pray that we might see and hear ever more clearly, so that we might follow our Lord even more closely.