As Jesus passed by, two blind men followed him, crying out,
"Son of David, have pity on us!"
Even if nothing else in our lives is clear, the thing that matters most is to know that Jesus is the Messiah, the one who came to save us. When we seek him first he will help open our eyes to anything else that is truly important. Having him as our absolute priority will gradually reorder our other priorities until they more accurately reflect reality. It is then that we will walk without stumbling in the way of the Lord.
Whoever is wise, let him understand these things; whoever is discerning, let him know them; for the ways of the LORD are right, and the upright walk in them, but transgressors stumble in them (see Hosea 14:9).
Most of us are not actually blind, or using a screen reader to read this reflection. But all of us, at least at times, are not sure where to turn for answers, or even what an answer would look like if we saw it. Our paths are often fraught with confusion. And it is often a confusion that doesn't seem directly related to Jesus. We may imagine him waving contentedly from church buildings as we pass by on our apparently urgent errands. But in fact he wants to come with us, to do life together with us. It is only he himself who is the light that illumines our lives. If we only meet him on Sundays or in church buildings a good chunk of our lives will remain in darkness.
The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going (see John 12:35).
In Advent we prepare for the coming of the one who is the light of the world. We do not do this because he is the ultimate Christmas decoration, in addition to all of the other season decor. We do it because we and our world are still in darkness and desperately need more of the light he brings us. We do it because even we ourselves, let along the disinterested secular masses, still frequently stumble without sufficient light. We ourselves are meant to become light to help push back this darkness. But this is only possible when the true light, Jesus himself, is living within us.
See that no one knows about this.
When people understand Jesus in a superficial way they tend to think of salvation as solving their problems as they understand them. But Jesus actually helps us to understand our lives and the world in a new way that relativizes the things we previously considered important. We might hope that he will fix our houses, our cars, our bodies, our socio-economic situations, or any number of other things. But the main thing Jesus wants to fix is our souls, which is to say, our relationship with his Father. This is what it really means for him to be the savior of the world. The first step is realizing that our vision of God is not yet as crystal clear as we desire. We still superimpose human ways of understanding on the divine. Salvation, if it means relationship, also means coming to see him more clearly. It is by this vision that we become more and more like him.
Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is (see First John 3:2).
When we finally see him as he is, it is then that the words of Isaiah will be fully realized:
On that day the deaf shall hear
the words of a book;
And out of gloom and darkness,
the eyes of the blind shall see.
The lowly will ever find joy in the LORD,
and the poor rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.
Songs In His Presence - In Your Light
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