Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Daddy, I Don't Want To See

Wow.....I never thought that I would hear that from anyone. Life sure has a way of teaching us things that are beyond our imagination. My little girl is 5 and a half now and she is asking so many questions and learning so many things. Just today she broke her all time record and brailled her name and the alphabet in 49 seconds. I think she's awesome!

A few weeks ago we were talking and she was wondering if there would ever be a way that her eyes could be fixed. She has asked this question before and we had actually talked about it in our home because of all the wonderful advances that science and technology have made. We told her that there may be a day when the doctors could fix her eyes so she could see. Her response was "Daddy, I don't want to see." We were kind of shocked because we know how much better it would be to see. Having never seen she doesn't know.
Some of her response was due to having to go through surgery, some of it was that it would be so different and change is scary. The largest part of it however was that being blind has become a large part of her identity. She is the blind girl, she gets lots of attention because of this, she gets to do things that other kids don't get to do. She knows braille and they don't. She has 3 teachers and the other kids only have 1. She has never known anything but blindness. It's who she is!

I wonder if many times we too don't want to see......I mean.....if our eyes are opened and we see certain truths more clearly, things may not be the way that we thought they were. What if our identity is based on what we have always thought to be reality. What if the world really isn't the way that we thought it to be.
I liken my daughter to believers because she can see the light but she doesn't see detail. Just like my daughter doesn't want to see maybe many of Gods people are happy just being saved or happy just doing things the way they've always been done. Maybe we too actually prefer being blind. Maybe alot of the changes that are so resisted in so many churches and associations are actually resisted for no other reason than if we did it that way we would lose our identity? I tell my daughter..... "We would love you the same!" We tell her "Don't you want to see your daddy and your mommy?" She doesn't say anything. Maybe we are just like she is, maybe we too prefer our identity more than seeing God work in our lives, our families, our churches, our jobs? My prayer is that I will find my identity in Jesus Christ and nothing else.
Maybe you are without Christ and you are totally blind to spiritual things, maybe you have your identity wrapped up in the things of this world. You can be more than that, you can identify with more than the temporary things of this world......Turn to Christ and find a much better identity in Him. May God Bless.