Lord, I want to see!

I know only one thing:  I was blind, but now I see (Jn. 9:25).

 

Jesus said, "For judgment I have come into this world,, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind."

Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, "What? Are we blind too?"

Jesus said, "If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains" (Jn. 9:39-41).

 

"You are a king, then!" said Pilate.

Jesus answered, "You are right in saying that  I am a king.  In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.  Everyone on the side of truth listens to me."

"What is truth?" Pilate asked (Jn. 18: 37-38).

 

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The blind man told the Pharisees: "He is a prophet."  The Pharisees said, "He is a sinner."  "Whether he is a sinner or not, I don't know," said the man born blind.  "I know only one thing: I was blind, but now I see."

 

Like the Pharisees and like Pilate, we have all at one time or another passed judgment on Jesus.  We have all sifted through what we thought we saw and made a decision one way or the other about him, without knowing our own blindness.  I, too, judged Him at one time, thinking I was smarter, or more enlightened about the world of demons, for example.  I once told a student who asked me if I believed in the devil that we create our own heaven and hell.  "Jesus believed in the devil," she said to me.  And not wanting to give up my own intellectual blindness, I said, "Jesus was a man of His time; now we know better."

 

How blind, how stupid I was -- and could not see that the Son of God would know, would understand, things I could not see.  The king of the world is indeed king of the world, and Lord of heaven and of earth, but how few of us can recognize kingship in the man of Galilee, the One who was --and is today--- despised and rejected, scorned, and crowned with the thorns of man's disobedience and refusal to submit.

 

There is only one way to see what He sees and know what He knows: submission to His Lordship.  When we kneel before Him and acknowledge our blindness, when we ask Him to open the eyes of our hearts, our minds are also enlightened to see and understand spiritual truth.  Until that moment, we remain in our blindness; we remain limited to what we can see, taste, hear, and smell.  We remain locked up in the limitations of our own small minds and whatever "knowledge" the world can offer us. 

 

"Lord, I want to see!"  A simple, heartfelt prayer will open to us the secrets of heaven.  Jesus is the only One worthy to open the scroll and to touch our eyes and our hearts.  Our blindness is not the end of the story, but only the beginning.