Day 137
1 Samuel 20:1‐21:15; John 9:1‐41; Psalm 113:1‐114:8; Proverbs 15:15‐17
Was Blind but Now I See
These are familiar words from a familiar hymn. Perhaps more familiar to us are the words of a hymn than words from John’s Gospel. In the Gospel story, the man who was born blind receives his physical sight from “the light of the world,” Jesus. In his hymn “Amazing Grace,” ex-slave trader John Newton recounts his journey out of the darkness of spiritual blindness into full-sighted life in Christ through His grace.
Amazing grace! how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.
Both physical and spiritual healing have the same source: the One who came to shine light into all of our darkness.
Neither man remained the same once he had been touched by the source of all life and light. Even those who had known him since birth had difficulty recognizing the healed blind man, and John Newton’s life was so transformed that he became an Anglican clergyman and mentored the man who was finally able to abolish the slave trade in England, William Wilberforce.
Have we allowed that healing light to extinguish our darkness so that people who have known us since birth can see the transformation?
The Rev. Sarah Bronos