I’m reminded of the phrase ‘Still we are learning.” This is in relation how we react when we are interrupted, and not just interrupted, but unalterably so. Yesterday, on a trip to Kansas, a connecting flight was cancelled due to severe thunderstorms. Cancelled. Full stop. What is one to do? We could have pitched a fit, yelled and screamed, demanded our rights, made a nasty scene. Remember the word ‘unalterable’? Yep. The situation would not have changed. (we chose to be patient and understanding, foregoing the aforementioned hissy fits). Our kind airline automatically booked the next available flight for the following day at the same time. The travel hiatus was to be 24 hours. The customer service rep was incredibly helpful. It was not an enviable job yesterday – one customer was sobbing uncontrollably at her colleague’s counter! We were now overnighting and wondered how and where to retrieve our checked bags. The baggage department person was quick to find a solution for our baggage issue, but to re-handle it and get it back to us, she announced, would take upwards of 6 hours. We chose (accepted we needed) to wait. In the hours that followed, we were surrounded by travelers who were not having a good day (or attitude). Think: unalterable.
I think the spiritual blindness Jesus encountered in the Pharisees following the healing of the man with physical blindness was also unalterable. In John’s Gospel, chapter 3, MSG, he says: “. . . God-light streamed into the world, but men and women everywhere ran for the darkness.” That healing painfully exposed their darkness. Allowing, or admitting that, meant fully acknowledging their sin. It was a terrifying prospect, so they used the force of their haughtiness and indignant anger to attempt to direct the spotlight elsewhere – anywhere but on them. In other words, their choice was to remain unalterable.
In glorious, heart-wrenchingly beautiful contrast, the healed man fully embraced his exposure to light and to the Light, falling on his face in worship at Jesus’ feet. Jesus tells him that this is the reason he’d come, to make the physically, and spiritually, blind, truly see. We, too, have met the Opener of blind eyes, and have been invited to worship Him. PD
ps. The result of yesterday’s hours of waiting was that our baggage, already in queue for today’s flight, was irretrievable, making the situation? You guessed it! Unalterable.
