The Gift of Blindness...

To be honest, human beings start out pretty blind to most things. We start with clean slates, our minds empty of conceptions about our actual situation.  If we grew up in the Church, then we have a dim conception, from a very early age, that we somehow have things mostly right, and from here on out, it's just finishing work.

And perhaps when we look at ourselves, we might even agree with this statement. We don't really murder people, commit adultery, steal office supplies, or drink just a little too much wine on the weekends. We are fine upstanding, decent people.

We are not swayed from this view very much by our families and churches. They perhaps even take this illusion a little bit farther. As it says in the good book, "…we have died to the flesh…" and thus aren't bound by those pesky fleshly, carnal desires. We have died to the world, and all that which it holds onto us by. We see the situation for what it is. No more, no less.

And we grow up.

We grow older.

And it begins. With frightening rapidity.

We thought we saw clearly. We saw that we were dead to all these earthly, fleshly desires. At least we thought we could see.

But we grow up.

We grow older.

And we begin to see.

We aren't dead to earthly, fleshly desires. And we find this out in small and big ways. If we're lucky, small ways. But, truth be known, for some of us it takes a rather large brick wall to bring us to our senses. We will not admit that we are merely human, and can't walk on water, unless we are thrown in the deep end, bound and gagged. To truly find out that you are human, and carnal at that, is an immensely humbling experience.

We begin to see what a burden we bear.

Now perhaps all through this you have been asking yourself, or perhaps berating God, "why didn't you tell me earlier? I could handle it!".

Maybe we couldn't.

Would you want to be told you had lost before the starting gun had gone off?

Would you want to know that you are broken, even before you knew what wholeness was?

Would you want to know that you would wreak havoc for someone, before you even had the desire to help?

I suppose my point is this. We needed to be blind. We needed to not see our burden, so that we could actually start walking, no, LEARN how to walk. We would have given up before we could even do something about it, if we had seen our burden. And right now, I suspect that even I myself cannot see my entire burden. And to tell the truth, it feels heavy even right now.

As I grow older, I am, by the grace of God, becoming less blind. I see more and more of the burden I carry. I don't think I would carry on if I knew it were bigger and heavier than this. I might not have hope. Or even believe that God has already triumphed over all my burdens.

So for now, I am thankful for blindness. Thankful that I can only see a small portion of my burden. Thankful that God has conquered it all, even the parts I can't see yet.