Willful Blindness

I am feeling very frustrated right now. It is a very diffiuclt thing to be able to see something with perfect clarity and yet have others around you be so amazingly blind. I was tellling a friend of mine the other day that until you are no longer blind, you don't realize that you were ever in the dark. Lately the scales have definately fallen from my eyes and this is both a wonderful and terrible thing. Wonderful in the sense that I can see everything with such clarity. And terrible in the sense that I can see things with such clartiy. It is truly a quandry. Was I better off living a life of relative bliss and ignorance? I have begun to wonder.....


On the one hand, it is an amazing gift to begin to see things as you have never seen them before. To examine something so familiar and yet see it as a completely new creation. Every moment seems to bring a new revelation. There is an expansiveness to this. I find myself wondering how far this will go and how long it will continue.   It is a bit like looking at one of those picutres made up of tiny individual blocks and suddenly seeing the larger picture they create.

On the other hand, I begin to see that many of the people around me are amazingly, willfully blind. Because my eyes are open I can now see this.  I am like the leaper that Jesus healed who went away telling everyone about his miraculous healing.  I want my other leper friends to also be healed.  Look! I shout and wave my hands.  Look!  I am healed!  You can be too!  Follow me!    Instead they hang back.  They complain.  The road is too dusty.  We are tired.  We don't want to walk that far.  Go tell that Jesus fellow to come to us.  We don't want to go to Him.  It's too hard.    He expects too much.  Repent?  Turn away from our sin?  We don't want to hear that message!  Just tell him to heal us.  That's all we want.  I go away saddened at the wonderful gift they cannot see right before their very eyes...

Sigh.  I am in good company.   God has shared my frustration.  Listen to these harsh words from Isaiah 6:9  "Go and tell this people:  Be ever hearing but never understanding; be ever seeing but not perceiving.  Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes.  Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed"  I can now see with my eyes, hear with my ears, and understand with my heart.  How long, oh Lord, how long until the people around me can do the same?    Shalom!