Insightful Musings on the Scriptures

by

Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67

Good evening, dear ones.

It’s nigh unto my bedtime. But I was able to get in a nap this afternoon…about the time Becki left to return the little boys to their mom.

Perhaps I’ll drop some humiliating trivia on you. I started out the day with a very strange cup of coffee. Here’s how it happened. While singing a little worship song in the kitchen and thinking about stuff…I was preparing tea for Becki and coffee for me. I selected two tea bags (I almost always use two bags at a time in Becki’s huge cup that I deliver to her in bed every morning around 6am or so). But being preoccupied with other thoughts, I wasn’t paying careful attention to what I was doing. I plopped the two tea bags into my coffee cup and promptly filled it with coffee. It was only after that action was completed that my lights came on to what I had done. I selected other bags for Becki’s tea, but being the non-wasteful type I tried to drink my tea/coffee blend. I made it through about 2/3s of it. That “Perfect Peach” didn’t really fit well. I’m not quite ready to call this a sign of dementia.

I hope you sleep well. Blessings.

Love, Dad/Ray.

Are you kidding me?! Miraculously healed of absolute blindness instantaneously?—by a gracious gift of God?—and I’m supposed to keep my mouth shut?!? What possible value is there in keeping people blind to my seeing? How is that even possible? When someone asks how I came to see when they know I’ve been blind, am I supposed to lie?—maybe tell them a made-up story like, “My donkey made me so mad I couldn’t see straight, and when I got off to beat his hind end, he kicked me in the head, and poof!—I could see!” If I tell the truth, am I then a disobedient servant? If silence or fabrication is truly what’s required of me, I think it was a lot easier just to stay blind!

Without doing research into the original language and consulting commentaries, I’ll venture to proceed with my own judgment—until a better view should emerge. I think Jesus knew full well that He was stating an absurd impossibility—that the drive to share with others a story of miraculous deliverance would be compelling. And perhaps that identifies the value for this strange command being given. After all, how can I possibly not sing, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me,” if it is also true that “I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see?”

I suppose there is a possibility that a technicality could be lost in the translation—that Jesus really meant that these guys not broadcast all over the place that He was the Messiah. But even that doesn’t make a lot of sense. Whatever the case may be, their addressing Him in the first place as “Son of David” (v. 27) was a strong equivalent to “Messiah.” Somehow these blind guys came to see more clearly than most Who Jesus really was. That clarity would surely have come more by means of spiritual revelation than by knowledge of Jesus’ family line.

To be sure, when we honestly come to God on His terms, in true worship and surrender, he has ways of turning our lights on. The dramatic difference between living in the dark and living in the light (born again) is like the difference between being blind and seeing. That is the essential change that inducts us into the role and function of being “the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14). Let’s allow Jesus Himself to expand on that idea from the THE MESSAGE translation: “You're here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We're going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don't think I'm going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I'm putting you on a light stand. Now that I've put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand — shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you'll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:14-16 from THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language © 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved.)