Many of you have probably heard the song with this title. The lyrics talk about the pain being gone and how the day would be bright and sunny. It’s a catchy, positive song, but that’s not what I’m thinking about as I write this.
There is another kind of sight that we often overlook. To those raised in the church, you may have heard of the term “spiritual blindness.” What exactly does that mean?
I’m going to borrow a story our pastor used a week ago found in Mark chapter eight. The story is about a blind man who had some great friends who didn’t want him to remain bind. So they brought him to Jesus.
We aren’t told how the man became blind, but by something he says, I rather doubt he was born in this condition. Maybe he fell and hit his head. Maybe some illness took his sight. But the people who brought him to Jesus, knew that Jesus could heal and they begged Jesus to touch him and heal him.
When I think about that word “touch” I think of physical touch. I know, that’s kind of a given, but I’m just clarifying that I’m not talking about spiritual touch as in spiritual blindness. These people wanted Jesus to physically touch their friend. This seems to have become a common request of Jesus because a chapter earlier people brought a deaf man to Him and “begged Jesus to lay his hand on the man to heal him.” Jesus had used physical touch to heal in the past and these people knew it. They wanted physical touch for physical healing now.
So Jesus took the blind man’s hand and led him away from his friends – the Bible says he took him out of the village. Apparently Jesus wanted to do this miracle in private – though it could be implied that the disciples went with him and just the villagers remained behind because as we’ll later see, there were people there.
But notice that Jesus took his hand. He already touched him by doing so. But that did not bring about his healing. Then Jesus spit on the man’s eyes (perhaps they were closed because my Bible says “on” not “in”. But either way, that would feel really weird, wouldn’t it? To have someone spit on your eyes? But Jesus often healed in unexplainable ways.
Now you would think that one touch, one spit, one whatever from Jesus would be enough to heal, right? But Jesus asked the man, “Can you see anything now?” Do you think Jesus already knew the answer to that? And do you think Jesus meant more than physical sight?
The man’s response was, “Yes, I see people, but I can’t see them very clearly. They look like trees walking around.” (This is why I think he had sight in the past. If he’d been born blind, he would not know to describe a person as a tree or what a tree looked like.) And this also indicates that some people had followed Jesus out of the village – probably the disciples – because the man saw people.
But I digress. Did you catch that the man could not see very clearly? Yet Jesus, to my knowledge, had never needed to touch any other person he healed more than once. Why did this man need a second touch? (Actually a third if you count Jesus taking his hand to guide him.) I mean if a woman could touch His robe and be healed, Jesus could heal without ever touching or spitting on the man’s eyes.
Our pastor had a great reason to explain this, but I don’t want to steal his words. And besides, I had an additional thought, which I wanted to focus on here.
I don’t think this healing was simply about physical blindness. I think the man had more than one thing going on and Jesus wanted him to see Him clearly. He could have made that happen physically in a heartbeat, but sometimes it takes us longer to see Him with spiritual eyes.
Physically, I can look out the window and see it snowing, and I can watch the squirrels play and ponder how long winter is going to last and when will I see the sun? But if I look again, I can see the beauty of the snow God made and the people He created now hunkered inside their warm houses. I can thank Him for the changing seasons He made to sustain life. I can see purpose in all that He has made, including me.
Spiritual sight lets me see truth. It helps me understand things that I cannot see with my physical eyes, like what true love looks like and how nature and the human body and every living thing points to an intelligent Creator. Without that kind of sight, I am blinder than I would be if I lost my physical sight.
I think that might have been what Jesus wanted that man to see. The man knew what physical sight felt and looked like. He’d experienced it before. But perhaps it took more than a single touch from the Great Physician to heal the kind of sight problem this man had. Perhaps Jesus pulled him away from the crowd to show him that the only person he needed to see clearly was Jesus Himself.
When I was a child, I sensed God’s touch. He spoke to my heart. He put a desire in me to know Him. He opened my eyes to see Him. To believe in Him. And I did because it made sense to my mind and my heart. I could see Him clearly then.
As I got older, more questions arose and doubts and struggles entered my life. I went through the typical teenage angst – maybe more so because of my introspective personality. And then I read a story that brought the words of Jesus into clearer focus for me. I fell in love with His Words and the Bible became real. I could see clearer than I did as a child.
Sometimes along life’s way, we need more than a single touch from the Lord to see Him through a spiritual lens. As Paul said, “Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.” Then…when we see God as clearly as He sees us now.
That man saw people walking but to him they seemed like trees. I wonder how many of us see Jesus but He’s fuzzy and His words don’t make sense and because we don’t understand we give up and decide it doesn’t matter. Who wants to be close to someone who looks like a tree walking around?
But when Jesus touches us again, when we feel His presence and know He’s real, there is something that happens in our hearts that changes us. Suddenly Jesus isn’t so fuzzy and the grace He offers makes sense. It’s like a seismic shift in our thinking. Our worldview clears and we recognize the things He has made. That He has made us to love Him and we do!
They call it transformation. Some Scriptures simply say, “Repent (change your mind) and believe.” Funny that we can’t really believe until we allow him to touch us – to rest His fingers on our eyes and His words to fill our hearts. We may live this life physically blind as Helen Keller did. But that doesn’t mean we have to remain spiritually blind.
I can see clearly now – not as clearly as I will when I see Him face to face. But clearly in that I know He knows me and I know He loves me and I belong to Him and He to me. Clearly enough to begin a relationship that lasts for eternity.
~Selah
#seeclearly #lovetruth #livegrace
