Open my eyes

John 9:1-8

A Man Born Blind Receives Sight

9²³⁴"As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.’ When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam’ (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see."

Recently I've come to a new understanding of this text. In July I began working for an agency that serves the blind and the visually impaired. Throughout the history of mankind there are about 20 accounts of people who were blind for most or all of their lives having their eyes restored to normal. But all of these stories bear similar characteristics. Instead of becoming joyous for receiving sight, these people sink into a depression and rely on the skills they developed while blind to help them interact with their world.

Modern science has an explanation for why this happens. In the brain are cells called neurons. According to wikipedia, neurons "are electrically excitable cells in the nervous system that process and transmit information". These cells are instrumental in processing the images our eyes take in and helping the brain interpret them. By the age of 4 or 5, all brain neurons are permanently assigned to the task they will do for the rest of our lives. The neurons that help us interpret images do things like help us see motion, give us depth perception and help us differentiate the subtle differences in faces and facial expressions. If your brain neurons are not assigned to these tasks in the first years of your life, you will never perceive these things. Neurons cannot be reassigned to a new task as adults, though they may be able to be reassigned at a young age, so someone who loses their sight as an infant may be able to use those vision neurons for other tasks.

What this means is that in the 20 or so cases of miraculous eye restorations that have been recorded by humans over the centruies, the person could not see. Yes, their eyes could now take in images, but their brains could not interpret those images. They sank into sadness, because what should have made life easier was actually a burden. They were bombarded with unintelligible sensory experiences. I suppose it would be like how it feels to be in a room full of people speaking a language you've never heard before: it all sounds like noise, but it makes no sense, you can't even distiguish a single word.

What is truly amazing about the miracle John records is that it's very clear that once the man's eyes are opened he can see. In other words, Jesus has changed not just his eyes, but the very wiring of his brain. I only came to understand this a few months ago myself, and suddenly this miracle took on a whole new meaning for me.

Certainly I knew in a very real way that Jesus can heal things that seem impossible to heal and restore us to the state we were intended to live in. But in a way I could never fully relate to this miracle. Sure I could say that I was born blind in some way, in a way that I didn't know Jesus, but truthfully that's an analogy that's unfair to blind people. Really blindness is not ignorance. I know many people who do not have vision but who are amazingly aware of what is around them. So now that I understand a little more about what it takes to see, I realize that this miracle does in fact apply to me, and it applies directly to you as well.

Opening the eyes of this man was only half of the miracle (and I might argue the lesser half). The other half was that he could see. That means that Jesus transformed his mind and the way it works, which is scientifically speaking, impossible. Eyes have been restored by men, but the minds could not be changed. In a way I knew that Jesus transforms minds, but I knew in a distant way. Now I see deeply how this miracle applies directly to my own life. When I met Jesus, and he healed me, he changed the way I thought and perceived. I went from being an angry person who rejected God, a hopeless person without joy, and almost instantly I was transformed. Suddenly I was happy, joyful and unable to deny that God not only existed, but worked directly in my life. In an instant my mind was transformed. And it was my mind, because it has taken years for my heart and my will to conform to what my mind knew in an instant.

When Jesus enters our lives and we seek His healing, He transforms us to the very core of how we work, understand, move, live, breathe and encounter the world. That is the true miracle, and it is for everyone, not just those with some seemingly insurmountable difference. When I met Jesus, I was dead in the very core of my heart. And now I am alive. Praise God for the miracle of my own healing.