[This is one in a series of mid-week Reflections published by Horley Baptist Church during May 2020]
Do you have any experience of being blind? At the age of eight I wanted to see what was happening in the street outside and so, like Zacchaeus, I climbed up into a tree, in order to get a better viewpoint. My eyes started itching and by the time I reached the ground I could not see anything – total whiteout. There followed some panicky hours involving eye wash and ice cubes.
I learnt a number of lessons from that experience:
- Don’t sneak out of your house just because the outside world seems more interesting.
- Don’t ignore the details – the Zacchaeus account specifies a sycamore tree, not the chilli-pepper tree that I had chosen.
- Don’t rub your eyes with infected hands.
Now, some sixty years on, the same lessons have a new significance.
Some years later, whilst in fire brigade training, I was charged with ‘rescuing’ a group of people from a blacked-out, smoke-filled room, leading them to safety along a corridor to the outside. I knew the layout of the building; it ought to be straightforward. However, surviving in a smoke-filled environment means crawling on the floor, using one hand to find your way. What my eyes had seen at five feet high was very different to that found by my hand at six inches from the floor.
In both cases the loss of sight was, thankfully, temporary.
In 2 Kings chapter 6 we read of another instance of temporary blindness. The enemies of Israelites had laid siege to the city where Elisha the prophet was living. Elisha prayed that the soldiers should be made blind and, once they could not see, he led them into the hands of the King of Israel who fed them and sent them home. We too are under threat; how will our actions be remembered once the threat is lifted?
This passage also recounts an incident with Elisha’s servant. As he looked out from the besieged city he could focus only on the problems facing them. Elisha prayed that he might be allowed to see the bigger picture; the forces of God were greater than those arrayed against them.
Surely, a similar prayer is appropriate for us today.
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Contributed by Steve Humphreys; © Steve Humphreys