(Lent as vision correction)
(This message is also available at: http://pastorjimdorton.blogspot.com/)
I use metaphors a lot. I know. But God uses things of nature, things of His natural creation, to teach us about parallel truths of His spiritual creation. We know that Jesus healed many people, including the blind. (This makes me think that it would be good to study Jesus’ miracles in light of what He might have been teaching us about the spiritual nature of things. Hmm…well that’s for another season. )
Besides Jesus healing of the blind, He also taught using the idea of blindness as a spiritual shortcoming:
““Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.
Woe to you, blind guides…You blind fools…You blind men… You blind guides…Blind Pharisee!" Selected verses from Matthew 23: 13 - 26
Jesus was talking, of course, not about physical blindness but about an inability, of leaders of the church by the way, to see as God intended them to.
Saul was a Pharisee and God had a great work intended for him. But Saul was so spiritually blinded that he was overseeing the persecution and murder of early Christians. So spiritually blind was he that when Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus that Saul lost his physical sight.
God changed his name.
God changed his heart.
God restored his physical sight.
God gave him a new way to see and it caused an immediate* change:
Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, “Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength. Saul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus. Immediately he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God.
We may not be extreme cases like Saul/Paul or the other Pharisees but there is no reason to think God would expect less from us. Remember the warning to the church in Laodecia inRevelation 3 for being neither hot nor cold,
Jesus chastised the Pharisees. He struck Paul down. He wants us to get it,
For this day of Lent, let’s not worry too much about the how. Let’s just remember the words to the old hymn (based on Psalm 119) and sing or say them as a prayer:
Open my eyes, that I may see glimpses of truth Thou hast for me;
Place in my hands the wonderful key that shall unclasp and set me free.
Silently now I wait for Thee, ready my God, Thy will to see,
Open my eyes, illumine me, Spirit divine!
Amen. Should the Lord tarry another day, and if it His will, see you tomorrow Pastor Jim
*You may have heard that Paul spent some fourteen years before beginning his ministry; that is the time before his missionary trips started, he preached in Damascus “immediately” upon recovering.
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