Soul Vision: Examination, Care and Correction

This week the church is thinking about the challenge of being blind.  

Many blind people can move with grace and facility through many obstacles.  But it is the rare blind person who can effectively "act" in all times and places as a sighted one.  Most will know when and how to ask for assistance or guidance.   

On the other hand, I know many, many sighted people who move every single day of their life with obscured or cloudy vision.  They aren't intentionally ignoring what is going on.  In fact, they actually can see well enough to function (at some level).   But they miss the finer (and perhaps the finest) details of life.  

I can't imagine what it would be like to experience a sudden transformation from total blindness to clear vision. However, I know the difference between obscured, blurred sight and 20/20 acuity.  I can function without corrective lenses.   But, wow, what a difference they make, especially when I am driving or watching something in the distance!  

Most of us have experienced a vision examination and responded to the questions: Which is clearer: This, or this?  It's the way the physician diagnoses and then prescribes what we need to see clearly.  The objective is to see the world with as little distortion as possible, right?  

As I pray, I look at myself and life around me.  I find myself gazing at people, situations or concerns and wondering if I am actually seeing them the way God does.   Are there cataracts forming on the eyes of my soul?  Am I looking through fogged up or mucked up lenses?  How do I delude myself? Can I acknowledge my delusions (blindness) and allow Christ to heal my capacity to see? To what steps does He take me if I lean upon His arm as dependently as a blind person holds on to the harnass of her seeing eye dog?

The more I acknowledge my limited vision, the more I can see.   And Jesus reminds me that even what I see then is but an obscured or distorted view of what He knows is real. I must lean upon his arm, walking with him as one who is totally dependent upon his guidance.  I walk as a blind woman, trusting His eyes more than my own.  

Jesus said, "I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind."

Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, "Surely we are not blind, are we?"

Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, 'We see,' your sin remains.
John 9:39-41