There are four kinds of blindness spoken of in the Bible. One is the physical blindness as in the case of the blind man whom Jesus healed and the disciples asked whether the man was born blind because of sin of the blind man or because of the sin of his parents. The second type of blindness is described in Deuteronomy 16:19 which says, "Thy shall take no gift as a gift blindeth the wise." The idea is a warning against accepting gifts which will influence our minds to overlook faults of the giver. It deters correct judgment.
In mental blindness Second Corinthians 3:14, St. Paul says, "God of this world blinded their minds." and again in verse 4:4 "He that hateth his brother is in darkness and darkness has blinded his eyes." This indicates that hatred prevents us from seeing the good qualities of a person.
Spiritual blindness could be through ignorance or self-will. Jesus spoke of the Pharisees who complained that disciples ate bread without washing their hands and Jesus said about them, "Let them alone that they may be blind leaders and if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall in the ditch." Mathew 15:14, Luke 6:39
We can be blind to our own mistakes and we can be blind to our own good.
We are blind to God's abundant love, His blessings of health and material wealth for us.
What do you see in your room? I bet you don't see everything, If we set up a TV and switch it on, we will see numerous colours and pictures. They were all in this room but we could not see them without the proper equipment. Similarly, to hear the music we have to have a radio to tune in. The sound and pictures are there but without the proper receptors, we cannot access them. Similarly, to see the goodness of God, we have to tune in.
Elisha was in the city of Dothan. The King of Samaria came with a huge army and surrounded the city. The servant of Elisha went out of the city walls and found the enemy encampment. He was sore afraid. He came in and told his master what he saw and told him that it was frightening to see the army around the walls.
Elisha's reply was, "They that are with us are more than they that are with them." The servant did not grasp the meaning for he could not see. Then Elisha prayed and God opened the servant's eyes and he saw fiery chariots and horses surrounding them for protection against the forces of the King of Samaria.
God does not need fiery horses and chariots to protect His people for He can provide all the protection they need.
When Gideon was asked to go into battle against the Mideanites , he had 32,000 soldiers with him. God told Gideon that he should send away most of his people lest he thinks that it was the superior strength of his army that won the battle. So he asked his army that all who wanted to go back could go and half the force left. God told him again that still there were too many so He asked Gideon to lead them to the stream and ask them to drink water from the stream. Those who lapped as dogs do, God asked Gideon to take them to battle. Thus, he selected 100 instead of the 32,000 and won the battle.
When St. Thomas was running from the assassins, he entered a cave and within a few minutes the assassins came to the cave. They found a spider web covering the cave entrance so they fought among themselves that no one could have entered the cave without breaking the spider web. Thus God protected St. Thomas with the strength of a spider.
It is said that Robert Bruce was taught the most important lesson of his life by a spider. He watched the spider jump from one beam to the next six times and fail. He said to himself, will this spider teach me a lesson for I tried to take back my kingdom six times and failed. Will he attempt the seventh time to tell me that I should try the seventh time. He watched and found the spider win the seventh time So he went and collected an army and surprised the enemy and defeated them.
To find the goodness of God, we must have faith. When Claudius Ptolemy plotted the orbits of the planets on the basis of a geocentric universe with the orbits one within the other, Copernicus told him that God would not create such complicated celestial orbits. Thus he found the heliocentric planetary system.
Newton believed that God's laws must be simple and made the greatest discoveries of all time.
Einstein similarly believed in the simplicity principles of God's laws
Occam's philosophic rule that the simple answer is the correct answer, encouraged many people to find the correct answer to their searches.
The story of Naaman (Second Kings 5:) Naaman asked Gehazi, the Prime Minister of Syria, to go and wash in the River Jordan to get rid of leprosy. But Ghazi said, "Are not the waters of Syria better than the waters of Jordan/" and he got annoyed and went away. But Naaman's servant intervened and told him, "Master, if my master had told you to do some difficult undertaking, would you not have done that? Because his pronouncement was simple, you think it is not worth doing that. Irrespective of your conclusion, please do what my master told you." He listened to the servant's words and got rid of the leprosy.
Sometimes, sickness comes for reasons unknown to us. Jesus answered many questions about sicknesses whether the people contracted the sickness because of their sin or children contracted a sickness because of the sin of their parents. In John 9:1, we see Jesus telling them. "Neither has this man sinned, nor his parents."
Adversities are not always calamities.
Paul had an ailment of the body and he prayed that it should be removed. The answer to his prayer was "My grace is sufficient unto you."
In the film, The Robe, the paraplegic girl said "I am glad Jesus did not heal me for if he had healed, you would say that I praise him because he healed me. Now that I am not healed and when I praise him, you pay more attention to my words.
Jesus could have healed the blind man by a word. (John 9:7). He spat on the ground and made clay and anointed the eyes of the blind man and said to him, "Now go and wash in the pool of Siloam." What is the lesson we learn from this? We too must act. Faith without action is dead. We must also have a vision to act.
About vision, there is the story of the real estate man who took his client to a vast desert-like meadow and asked him what he saw there. When the man said he sees a desert, the real estate man said that he can see a tower built by his client in the middle of the desert standing 30 stories high with his name blazoned across the building. The client believed in the possibility and made the real estate agent's vision a fact. He built a tower.
The vision of Martin Luther King that the black and white in the U.S.A. will sit at the same table as equals and as brothers and sisters will one day become a reality has become so.
John the Apostle had a vision when he was in prison on the island Padmos. His was a vision of a new heaven and a new earth. It is a reality only to those who accept it as real. We have to believe and work on it to realize the effect of our belief.
We too can have a new Jerusalem and a new heaven and new earth. We too, can enjoy the wealth and abundance that God the good has in store for us but we have to become visionaries and believe what Jesus has said. We also need conviction.
Abraham Lincoln went to the grave of his girlfriend of his boyhood days, Anne Rutledge, who died shortly after their engagement. He dropped a stick saying that "if it falls on the grave, I will study law as you suggested and if it falls towards me, I will stay in the village and do agriculture." Fortunately for him, it fell on her grave and he went for law.
Adversities are stepping stones to success. Helen Keller, the blind, deaf, mute, became the world famous exemplar of modern educational methods for the blind just because she lost her sight when she was two years old due to an illness.
Abraham Lincoln became the president because his son , Robert, failed to make the grade in Harvard.
Milton wrote Paradise Lost in prison. St. Paul wrote many of his epistles also in prison. Moses was hunger stricken, destitute and ready to give up the ghost when God called him to lead Israel.
Job was stricken of all his possession, his children, and even his health before he was blessed abundantly and all his losses replenished seven fold.
Abraham had to accept to sacrifice his son Isaac before God promised his blessings.
Joseph had to be sold as a slave if Jacob and his family were to survive the famine in Israel.
The end of man's resources is the beginning of God's opportunities.
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