Seeing the Light

Seeing the Light

When I was in fourth grade I got my first pair of glasses. They were black plastic frames and clunky. I endured teasing from classmates who called me “Four Eyes.” And of course I broke them. Duct tape held them together at the bridge and the temples. In junior high I got a pair of glasses that were made of some indestructible plastic and were perhaps the most hideous glasses ever made. I still have that frame. It never broke despite my best efforts.

I should have been more grateful to even have glasses. Without glasses I certainly could not see very well. In fact, the world was a blur without them. I wondered sometimes what it must have been like for people with bad eyesight who had lived in a time without eyeglasses. I was always fascinated by the stories in the Gospel when Jesus would heal a blind person. Seems like a mighty fine thing for Jesus to do given how difficult it is to go through life with impaired vision if you’ve don’t have glasses.

A few weeks ago at Manna House an organization called VSP offered a mobile eye clinic for our guests. A local eye doctor (Dr. Schaeffer) partnered with VSP to do eye exams. For some of the guests, they got glasses that very day. Many others, however, had to wait for their glasses since their prescriptions were more complicated, typically bifocals or trifocals.

Today I had the honor of handing out glasses that have now arrived. Fourteen guests got glasses and there are more on the way. Guests carefully took their new glasses out of the cases and tried them on. I asked them if I could take their pictures as they put on their glasses (see the post earlier today on Manna House Memphis). Most were excited to get their pictures taken so that they could immediately see how they looked in their new glasses. All were quite happy with their new glasses.

“So that’s what you look like!” one guest said to me as he laughed, “You’re uglier than I thought.”

            “I can read the newspaper and books again,” said another guest, “and I can see far away.”

            “O man, the world’s back in focus! No more headaches!” a guests said with a smile.

            “This is my first pair of glasses in four years,” a guest said, “I never thought I’d get to see clearly.”

            The King James Version of the Bible says in Proverbs 29:18, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Of course this vision is not the literal ability to see, but rather the ability to receive God’s Word. Still the metaphor works because of the importance of literally seeing. Vision is so crucial for living. In the Gospel stories of Jesus’ healing of the blind, those who could not see supported themselves by panhandling near the Temple (John 9) or along the side of the road (Luke 18:25). Blindness was often viewed as a punishment from God; a view Jesus firmly rejected (John 9:3).

            The glasses today, like Jesus’ healing of those who were visually impaired, are signs of God’s graciousness. The world became slightly more lovely in those delightful moments as guests put on their new glasses. Joy broke through as they came to see with renewed clarity.

                Jesus when he healed a man born blind spoke of how he came to be the light of the world (John 9:5). Hank Williams drew on that Gospel image as he sang,

“Just like a blind man I wandered along,
Worries and fears I claimed for my own.
Then like the blind man that God gave back his sight,
Praise the Lord I saw the light.

I saw the light, I saw the light,
No more darkness, no more night.
Now I'm so happy no sorrow in sight,
Praise the Lord I saw the light.”

This morning we all got to see a bit of that light.