Blind

The people who walk in darkness

will see a great light.

For those who live in a land of deep darkness,

a light will shine.

You will enlarge the nation of Israel,

and its people will rejoice.

They will rejoice before you

as people rejoice at the harvest

and like warriors dividing the plunder.

For you will break the yoke of their slavery

and lift the heavy burden from their shoulders.

You will break the oppressor’s rod,

just as you did when you destroyed the army of Midian.

The boots of the warrior

and the uniforms bloodstained by war

will all be burned.

They will be fuel for the fire. (Isaiah 9:2–5 NLT)

Ever wonder what it’s like being blind?

Those who are blind – not just legally blind, but without any sight whatsoever – can’t really describe what they “see” because their eyes don’t work. The best way the rest of us can get a glimpse of how blindness is understood by blind people is by closing just one of our eyes. Rather than seeing the back of our own eyelids or even glimpses of light peaking through, the input from our open eye nullifies any input from our closed eye.

You cannot see anything out of that closed eye; even more, you are also ignorant of even the small bits of information you might have acquired were both eyes closed. Whatever you can “see” with your closed eye is the same thing a blind person sees. It’s not a world of blackness; it’s a world without any visual input whatsoever, one where you aren’t even aware of what you’re missing.

When Isaiah talks about a “people who walk in darkness,” which is to say all of humanity prior to Christ, we sometimes forget they are people who walk in a darkness they didn’t even know they were living in. They are like blind people who have never received any kind of visual input into their brains. When the “great light” of Jesus shined on their dark world, it illuminated everything, allowing them to see what was before unseeable. And what was unseeable, according to this passage from Isaiah, was a world free of strife, people free of the yoke of slavery, free of the oppressor’s rod, free of war.

Such is the power of the Gospel that through Christ – his birth, life, teaching, death, resurrection, and ascension – we can know the end of tribalism, hate, and persecution.

We would be good to remember that it is not just the people prior to Christ who walked in darkness. This is true about us as well. And even after we see the light, and choose to follow Jesus and his way, the end of such things is not automatic. The sins that so easily entangle still take up residence in our hearts. If we are to become like children, humbly allow God to guide the daily steps of our lives, we must not fall back into our old way of living.

What are you doing today, not just in your heart but through your actions, that helps push back against the oppression and tribalism so prevalent in our world?

“But I know this: I was blind, and now I can see!” (John 13:25).