42Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Friend, let me take out the speck in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.
Jesus summed it up in John 9:
39Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.”
40Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” 41Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.
And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.” Mt. 15:14
And after Jesus’ death and resurrection, Peter proclaimed, I Peter 1:
8Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, 9for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
It is all about humility, and deferring to God and to Jesus his son. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. (I John 1:10) But if we admit to sin, we have an advocate.
A woman named Rose Crawford had been blind for 50 years. "I just can't believe it!" she gasped as the doctor lifted the bandages from her eyes after her recovery from delicate surgery in an Ontario hospital. She wept for joy when for the first time in her life a dazzling and beautiful world of form and color greeted eyes that now were able to see. The amazing thing about the story, however, is that 20 years of her blindness had been unnecessary. She didn't know that surgical techniques had been developed, and that an operation could have restored her vision at the age of 30. The doctor said, "She just figured there was nothing that could be done about her condition. Much of her life could have been different."
As I read the news account of her case, some questions came to mind. Why did she continue to assume that her situation was hopeless? Had no one told her about the wonderful advances in eye surgery? Then I thought of the plight of those unreached by the Gospel. How many will go on living in moral blindness unless we bring them to the Savior? Millions will never know anything but spiritual darkness because no one has shared with them the Light that has come into the world.
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“Open My eyes, that I may see, glimpses of truth thou hast for me. Place in my hands the wonderful key that shall unclasp and set me free!”
Helen Keller was born blind and deaf. Her parents had given up on communicating with her. But later, when she grows up, she tells of the dramatic moment when Annie Sullivan first broke through her dark, silent world with the illumination of language, in her book -- Keller, The Story of My Life.
