Today is the fourth Sunday of Lent.
Our Gospel this week is the story of the Man Born Blind from John’s Gospel. In it we hear about both physical blindness and spiritual blindness.
When I think about this reading I tend to think about the Pharisees and their blindness to faith in Jesus. They tend to focus on how the blind man regained his sight and not on who made it happen.
We suffer from all sorts of blindness in our own lives. Sometimes we fail to see the hand of God in the good things in our lives, thinking instead that we are responsible for these things. After all, we work hard and are focused on being the best we can be at whatever it might be in our case. BUt I suggest a different way to look at that.
If we have talents where did those talents come from? We might be good stewards of those talents but the original talent is a gift from God. If we’re smart and do great intellectual things where did our intelligence come from? If we have musical gifts where did that original talent come from? If we have athletic prowess where did the original gift come from? I completely agree that our hard work, study, practice, exercise, etc. can develop those gifts but let’s remember where those gifts originate. Let’s not be blind to God’s loving gifts.
Let’s also be aware of our blindness in matters of race, religion, ethnicity, socio-economic status, political affiliation or whatever we look away from. Jesus tells us of the need to love our neighbor, not just certain ones, but all of them.
An attorney friend recently told a story to a group of us about encountering a guy at the courthouse who smelled of urine and was obviously poor. The guy obviously didn’t know where he was supposed to go or what he was supposed to do. My friend said no one present seemed to want to engage the man, including my friend, but he felt the Lord was calling on him to help the man, so he did. He talked about it being hard to do but he felt good after he assisted him. I think our entire group of men was convicted by his story. What would we have done? What would you have done?
I’ve also been hearing a lot of anti-Muslim talk lately among politicians and pundits. While certain Muslims, or Jews, or Christians, for that matter, behave badly and deserve justice upon them for it, let’s avoid giving in to our blindness that causes us to classify all members of a group together, painting with a broad brush as it were.
We all have areas of blindness. I hope we all recognize ours and pray for God’s grace to confront them and overcome them during this Lenten season.
That’s it for now. Thanks for reading.
I hope you have a great week.
Peace, Bob
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