November 19, 2001 9:30 - 10:30
There’s a good many things a person misses seeing when they are blind. I think the thing I missed seeing the most was just light. You see, I hadn’t always been blind. In fact, I believe children who are born blind, in a sense, have it better than those who go blind. You don’t believe me. Yes . . . I understand . . . those who go blind for whatever reason at least have seen a bit of the world. That’s true. But those who have never had the opportunity to see don’t know what they are missing. It’s like giving someone a spoonful of delicious food. They try it and find that they like it, but when they ask for more it’s denied them. That’s how I felt. I had seen the beauty of the earth. My young eyes had looked on the light of a gorgeous sunrise. I had seen the bright crimson sunset. Many times I had just lain on the roof of our house talking with my father and staring at the shapes the stars formed in the sky. I had tasted the beauty, and just as I was beginning to see how much I loved it, it was snatched from me.
My eyes had always been pretty good. At least I thought so. I never had much to compare them with. But at the age of twelve things started to change. First I noticed that when I read, the words at the edges of the page were not as clear as they had always been. I was concerned, but not greatly. By that age I understood that not everyone had the clearest eyesight. I thought mine was just changing a little. Within a month, though, I couldn’t even see the words on the outside edges of the page. Its not that they were to blurry, instead they had simply vanished into a blackness that was continually growing. More and more my range of eyesight was slowly shrinking. I told my parents, and visited the doctors, but there was nothing they could do except confirm my fears. I was going blind. Several months later my eyesight had been reduced to almost nothing. It seemed as though I was staring down two long, dark tunnels. The pictures that greeted me at the ends rarely matched. After six months the pictures were gone altogether.
My last days of sight were spent in fervent memorization. Not of words on pages, but of beauty. I wanted to etch green grass, blue sky, golden sand into my memory. I remember even longing for the dark clouds of storm to return before I lost my sight, so I would never forget what they were like. Most of all, I spent time just sitting . . . sitting and staring at the faces of my parents. They were not faces of strength or beauty, but they were pictures of the ones I loved most dearly. They seemed much different than they had looked even a year before. My blindness had taken its toll on them as well. More crevasses crossed there brows. More wrinkles crept from the corners of their eyes. But always I could look back into their eyes, and there find something that I always remembered seeing. A light. It was a light that had always meant everything was going to be alright. The light was there as we would give gifts on each other’s birthdays. The light was there even after I was paddled for disobedience or talking back. The light would even shine in the darkness of night, when my parents would comfort me after a bad dream. There was always that light which told me I was loved.
It’s been almost forty years since I last saw my parents. I stared long at them one night before going to bed, and when I woke in the morning they were gone. Yes, it was their voice that woke me. It was their hands that helped guide me out of bed, but they were gone from sight forever. I never saw them again. Dad passed away when I was thirty-four. Mom, when I was forty-seven. We . . . we had some good times, even after my blindness set in. Dad would just get in those romantic moods every once in a while. He would come home from work every once in a while and just by the things he said, you knew he was a man in love. He would walk in the door, and say “Hey guy! How was your day?” I would say something back, then he would greet my mother. If I didn’t hear anything being said for several moments I knew what was going on. “Are you guys kissing on each other?” I would say. “You can’t see anything, what do you care?” He’d respond, and we’d all laugh. Mom and I sure missed him after he died. I still remember his last words. “Take care of mom for me.” It was hard to let him go. Hard to know that light had left those eyes.
Mom and I got along well for those years. We kept each other going. But when she died . . . that’s really when things got tough. No, it wasn’t being blind, as much as simply being alone. Knowing that all the lights in my world had finally gone out. The people who truly loved me were all gone. Yes, there were family friends, but none so close as my parents had been. It was those friends though who introduced me to Jesus. I had heard of him, of his work, but I was a blind man. It was not as if I could just go hear him speak, and I wasn’t going to burden any of my friends with the task of leading a blind man on some fool’s errand. But Jesus came to me. It was early in the day when friends came in and practically dragged me out of the house to meet him. It all happened so fast I felt a bit embarrassed by everything. But when I got to Jesus He simply took me by the hand and led me down the road outside the gates of the village. As he led me, that’s when I knew this was no jokester, no con man playing games with people. This was real.
Moments after we stopped I felt Jesus warm, wet fingers gently press my eyes. As he rubbed them it seemed he washed away the darkness. Light! After forty years I finally saw light again. Things were not clear though, as they had once been. My sight was still blurry, probably from light penetrating eyes that had been dark for so long. He asked me if I could see anything. I told him I saw men walking, but they were deformed, looking to me like trees, broad at the top, and skinny at the base. Again his fingers rubbed over my eyes, and they were clear. I looked down at the vivid detail of my feet in the dusty dirt. Then the full realization of what had happened finally gripped me. I looked up, into the face of this man who had returned to me my sight. A man who had let me at last taste what I had once found to be so delicious. And in his eyes I saw what I had not seen for many years. In his eyes I saw the light. The light of love. And I was healed.
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