The Power of the Senses: Sight
"...this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in him..." (John 9:3 NIV)
It is a new month, May is here! The countdown is on with just days remaining in this season of transition for our family. My son Bailey is closing out his senior year of high school and preparing to enter college next Fall. It is incredibly emotional and overwhelming, particularly for him right now. We are walking with him through these last days of his high school experience and praying for him to seek solace in the Father, and savor these last moments. It is too easy to want it to just be over and done, because he is carrying such a heavy load of work and expectation from so many sources around him. I think so many of us observing from the outside, too quickly cast our opinion as to how it should be handled, and often times giving our advice and intended wisdom without considering the recipient’s state of being. Bailey is a powerfully sensitive and creative soul, and we have watched him excel greatly in so many areas of his life all these years. I hope and pray you will join us in showering him with abundantly supportive prayers, encouraging words, and simply open arms and inviting shoulders. There will be a great deal of emotion exploding from our family in the next few weeks as we help him ease through this transition, and release him to fly his way through the shifting winds yet ahead.
This month, as I am exploring the scriptures in my quiet time and in reading excerpts from both familiar and new authors, I would encourage you to consider how God met the needs of our fellow human beings through their senses. This week, my focus is on the sense of sight.
In John 9 we read about the man born blind and Jesus’ healing him and restoring his sight. How incredible this experience must have been for this man who knew only darkness from birth, and had to find his way through life depending upon his other senses. I cannot imagine, and while putting a blindfold on can to an extent fabricate the experience of being without sight, it is in no way equal to what it must be like to experience being born blind. We read as Jesus goes through the process of scooping dirt into his hands, spitting into it and mixing it up, then rubbing it onto the man’s eyes, and instructing him to go and wash in the Pool of Siloam. The man did as Jesus told him, and walked from that pool of water with full and new physical sight! The next thing we hear is the disciples asking Jesus, “Who sinned that this man was born blind?” Here comes his response to them: “No one sinned! He was born blind so that God’s glory could be revealed through him!”
What a powerful reminder and motivator for our faith! The struggle we experience in this life has purpose, purpose that is beyond our human comprehension. When we are experiencing the difficult seasons of life, and at times the struggle deepens to the point of physical pain, it is vital that we look up and seek God’s glory revealed! He may not show us right away-like the blind man who experienced years of blindness before he was miraculously healed-but we can trust that our healing is coming!
How do we position ourselves then when we are in the midst of great struggle? Find your footing, or you may be crawling on your knees, into a position of PRAISE! I cannot explain it, but I can tell you at some of the ugliest moments in my life, when I reached the bottom and had no more tears to cry and my heart was broken into a billion pieces, and the only thing I could say was, “Jesus, come…..” He did. He was there. He found me. He helped me and put me back together. He restored my hope. And my trust in Him, my faith was strengthened by how He stayed through it with me. We fail to recognize the presence and power of our God when we mistakenly package His response, before He has responded. Our human expectation of Him is just that, human. We stunt our own faith by this action, and therefore attempt to bring God down to our level. We need to ask God to give us new sight. We need to uncurl our grip on the struggle, release any idea we have of how we think we can get through this, and look up to SEE our God! He will use this ugly moment, this difficult season of life, for GOOD! Somehow, God has got this and all we need to do is let go and look up to see He is right here. He is faithful, good and loves us so!
Here's to finding our way into new sight! Join me on the journey. I promise He is with you and He will not fail you. Look up, Dear Ones!
