Wherever we find ourselves this Advent season, no matter what is going on around us, there is a truth sheltering us that can change our lives. In the darkness, even in our own blindness, the outcome of all things is meant to manifest the works of God.
Let us, with praise and thanksgiving to the Lord and for His Word, let us not be blind to that reality. All things work together for good for those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose. (Romans 8:28)
How can we know we fit that category? His purpose is that all things be summed up in His Son (Ephesians 1:10,) so we can dedicate our lives to that happy ending, one that nobody can anticipate without faith and hope, and nobody can forestall it.
And as to loving Him, it isn’t that difficult. We love Him the way we would love a spouse, looking to His interests, giving Him time, and lots of it, deferring to His heart and entrusting our own to Him. Enjoying Him! Oh, yes … enjoying Him! Refusing to fret when things don’t go our way … we have HIM!
Now we’re not blind anymore, and if we couldn’t see, we could look to the assurance that God will absolutely find a way to be glorified, blindness notwithstanding. What, after all, is impaired sight compared with the sin and iniquity from which we have been cleansed and set free.
As he passed by, he saw a man blind from his birth.
And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him.
We must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day; night comes, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
As he said this, he spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle and anointed the man’s eyes with the clay,
saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Silo’am” (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing. (John 9:1-7)
S’ant Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, Italy
Marketplace Monastics 