“I am the Light of the World” (John 8:12)
How do we react when we read these simple but beautiful, and certainly immensely powerful words by Jesus? It’s such a life-enhancing declaration by the Lord but can feel a little abstract and almost lofty in comparison to the ugly turmoil and turbulence we encounter too often in life. Yet I think He made this point about the illumination found in Him to give us reassurance in our frailties.
Sometimes I can hardly get my mind around the fact that I have been totally blind. It sounds dramatic but diabetic retinopathy caused bleeding into the central vision of my eyeballs. I could see nothing but a hideous dark red curtain of blood. Fortunately it happened to each eye at different times – not the same time – so I could still retain some level of vision. And praise God that healing did happen thanks to the skills of surgeons draining the blood in my right eye through surgery called a vitrectomy. And the long passage of time cleared the blood in my left eye. I can still walk into people I cannot detect in my peripheral vision though. In fact, my wife had to apologise to a man recently after I knocked him over without realising!
I know what it’s like to be blinded by a dark veil and see nothing else. I am talking in the physical sense but my life experience has given me acuity in discerning how spiritual eyes can also be smothered in a crepuscular lack of sight through the pervading evil in earthly life and how essential it is to keep perceiving the radiance of Jesus. Our hope.
I was thinking of this recently when a nurse told me I had “minimal hearing loss” with tinnitus. He tagged on another phrase said to me too often these days, “… age related.” Frustrating, another diagnosis to contend with! Or so it seems, but I don’t feel that way. I went to a diabetes conference a few years ago in which the main speaker said that if there’s one thing diabetes has taught her it’s resilience and I would partly agree with that. I say partly, because I am aware of my weaknesses and it’s God’s strength I rely on. I am dependable too in the most glorious way on the fact that Jesus is the beacon of my life. Whether through physical eyes or spiritual eyes, the knowledge that the Creator sees me, and cares, is enough for me. He is the light of all our worlds!
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