“Imagine if the only things you had today are what you thanked God for
yesterday”
What would your world look like?
This question came to me one day in prayer a few years ago
And honestly, the world I imagined was a world of darkness
The people and things I failed to thank God for just seemed so tiny
compared to the gifts I realized He gave me on a daily basis.
My friends, our Gospel for today speaks about one of those gifts so
many of us take for granted each day:
The gift of sight
Throughout the course of the story, we follow the story of a man born
blind
In Jewish culture, people born with physical impediments were often
seen as having sinned or their parents had sinned to cause this
These folks could not get any job aside from relying on the generosity of
folks by begging
On this particular day, this the blind man encounters Jesus
Jesus comes without money, but what He offers is so much more
Not only does He cure the man of his blindness
But He also reveals His identity to the man as the “Christ”
When the man realizes this truth, his only response is to worship Jesus
While sight was certainly a great gift
The man realizes the greatest gift was having an encounter with the
Christ
Ironically, our Gospel speaks very heavily about another type of
blindness: Spiritual Blindness
While the Jewish officials could certainly physically see, Jesus subtly
points out they are spiritually blind
They do not realize that right in front of them all along is the Christ
that they have long waited for
This is the Christ they preach and teach about
Yet when Jesus comes and performs these wondrous deeds, they cannot see
They doubt
My friends, those who often come to believe in the Gospels are those
who are most simple
Think about it
To whom did the Angel Gabriel appear to announce she would be the
mother of God?
A simple woman from Nazareth
Who else did the Angels appear to?
Simple Shepherds
Who became the first evangelist for the Church?
The Woman at the Well… a sinful Samaritan woman who’s encounter with
Jesus caused her to tell the entire town about Him
And who did Jesus call to be His disciples
Fishermen, tax collectors… very simple and often uneducated men
While having so little, they lived a life dedicated to thanking God
through their works and words
I think that so often in life we can close off our minds to the work of
God all around us
When we encounter people daily, we can become blind to see Christ
inside of them
We find ourselves on this 4th Sunday of Lent having
encountered Christ
But what do we do with that encounter?
Do we talk about it?
Are we willing to share it?
Today, my friends, I pose you the same dilemma that came to me in
prayer a few years ago:
“Imagine if the only things you had today are what you thanked God for
yesterday”
Your imagination may reveal a dark world to you
But we need to remember that Christ came into the world to be the
“Light of the World”
Today is not too late to live a life of thanksgiving
