What if you could “see” anyone you wanted; who would that be?

During Covid, many young adults grieved because they couldn’t see their grandparents, especially those denied visitors while they lay dying. My friend, Bob, flew all the way from Los Angeles to Chicago to see his mom before she passed away–but her caregiver only permitted him to wave at his mother through the window.

For more than a year, many Filipina wives, like my daughter-in-love Clyde, have longed to see their husbands. But these men, like my son, Josh, have been stuck in their home country while working and trying to navigate challenging Covid restrictions. 

Even before the pandemic struck, thirty-six year old Predencia* wanted to see his 18-month-old daughter. But the lens inside his eyes had become opaque due to cataracts. Darkness closed in making him completely blind. He couldn’t work, couldn’t support his wife and three daughters and, he’d never seen his baby girl. In a Ted Talk, eye surgeon, Jeff Levenson explains how the lenses inside Predencia’s eyes had hardened forming cataracts. A simple operation could remove and replace them with a lens implant. But there was more involved. To get from his mountain home to Oaxaca, Mexico, where the operation could take place– two friends had to help Predencia walk eight hours on a dirt road to catch a bus.

Spiritual Cataracts

Predencia took that journey so an operation could restore his physical vision. But all humans suffer from a far more debilitating blindness– one that’s challenging to recognize and correct. In his book, Confessions, St. Augustine describes how:

the arrogance of pride, the pleasures of lust, and the poison of vain curiosity are the impulses of a soul that is dead, not one so dead that it lacks all impulse, but one that is dead because it has forsaken the fountain of life and is swept along by the fleeting things of this world, lending itself to their ways (p. 331).

And, most of us never see it. Instead, due to sin, our natural lens focuses on rebellion against Jesus and God’s ways. By looking to people and circumstances around us, we push the limits celebrating self-destructive influences instead of examining the spiritual truths that bring the fountain of life into view. Walking in the wrong direction, our spiritual cataracts continue to harden until they start shutting out the light. Eventually a person becomes blind to reality and stumbles in the darkness unable to differentiate between self-serving lies and God’s goodness.

Believing is Seeing

But for us, there’s a sure hope–even more certain than Predencia’s. God’s lazer, the Bible, can pulverize the ways of this world, and replace them with the truths that restore our spiritual sight. Better than any surgical instrument, God’s written Word is called “the sword of the Spirit” (Ephesians 6:17). As we believe and look to Jesus, His Holy Spirit guides us into the truths of our need for a Savior.

In Romans 12:1 & 2, the Apostle Paul explains some of the process for how a relationship with Jesus changes a person’s vision so that individual can perceive much more than they ever imagined.

I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

Making a deliberate decision to follow Christ renews a person’s mind so that individual begins to see how good God’s will is. And, that changes everything.

A Divine Kaleidoscope

Gaining spiritual sight goes above and beyond what a color-blind person experiences when he puts on special glasses for the first time. An entire realm emerges with one delightful surprise after another. Gratitude for God’s creation explodes as we realize that the same One who created the universe, loved us enough, despite our sins, to die for us. We start to comprehend that in His image each human being has immense value and unique purposes. As we embrace God’s forgiveness, grace, and mercy in our own lives; it becomes much easier to offer those things to others, even if they’ve wronged us in hurtful ways. While playing in God’s fountain of joy, life starts making sense, and even our struggles take on new meaning.

Problems Become Opportunities

Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind consider one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, as He already existed in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied Himself by taking the form of a bond-servant and being born in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death: death on a cross. 

*Predencia’s name may be spelled wrong as the video didn’t permit me to check it.