Open my eyes, that I may see
Glimpses of truth Thou has for me;
Place in my hands the wonderful key
That shall unclasp, and set me free.
Silently now I wait for Thee,
Ready, my God, Thy will to see;
Open my eyes, illumine me,
Spirit divine!
(“Open My Eyes That I Might See” by Clara H. Scott)
Then Jesus took them through the writings of Moses and all the prophets, explaining from all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. By this time they were nearing Emmaus and the end of their journey. Jesus acted as if he were going on, but they begged him, “Stay the night with us, since it is getting late.” So he went home with them. As they sat down to eat, he took the bread and blessed it. Then he broke it and gave it to them. Suddenly, their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And at that moment he disappeared! (Luke 24:27–31 NLT)
When Helen Keller was not yet two, she contracted an illness that rendered her both deaf and blind, effectively cutting her off from the world around her. It wasn’t until a few months before her seventh birthday that Anne Sullivan came into her life as her teacher. Keller refers to the day Sullivan arrived at her family’s home, with a doll as a gift to her, as her “soul’s birthday.” Sullivan then signed the word doll in Keller’s hand, which Keller repeated, thus beginning her formal instruction. However, she wouldn’t connect that Sullivan was spelling out words until a later interaction, which Keller described years later in her autobiography, writing, “Somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me.” She goes on: “The living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, set it free!”
Though there was no cure for Helen Keller’s eyes or ears to allow her to see and hear once more, Anne Sullivan found a different way to open up Keller to the world around her. Christ does the same to us. Without Jesus, we are as people who wander aimlessly, blind and deaf to the realities of this world. Once we accept His loving embrace, we begin to see the world anew. Like Keller, who spent years acquiring the language to understand and describe the world, this is not immediate for us, either. We must continually choose to allow Jesus to open our eyes so that we might see His truth and see the world through His eyes instead of our own. Invite God today to open up your eyes to the world as He sees it.