Before I came to New Zealand in 2012, I had never driven a car and when I started taking lessons and moving through the different stages to a full licence, I soon realised rules where much stricter here. My instructor (mostly Keith) kept telling me, “Check your blind spot.” He demonstrated this by standing and crouching in different places around the car where I was unable to see him from the driver’s seat. Fortunately, my car has some features that help me with blind spots, but we shouldn’t rely on this technology.
Our Christian lives can be similar. We may have spiritual blind spots, areas of our lives or our world view where we don’t recognise that we are doing wrong. Unless they are brought into the light, they can keep us from seeing God’s truth clearly. John Chapter 9 which I spoke about on Sunday, shows this quite well.
The disciples’ blind spot was that they thought the man was blind because of his or his parent’s sin. They were looking for someone to blame instead of asking what God wanted to do. Jesus shifted their focus from blame to giving God the glory.
The neighbours in the story also had a blind spot. They meant well, but their lack of faith meant they struggled to accept the miracle which led to confusion about who the man was and stopped them seeing God at work in this man’s life.
And for the parents, it was fear of being excluded from the synagogue by the Pharisees.
For the Pharisees the blind spot was much bigger which eventually stopped them seeing at all. Their pride and flawed logic that Jesus (who miraculously healed someone on the Sabbath) must be a sinner because he broke the Sabbath and therefore couldn’t be from God, led them down the path of totally rejecting Jesus.
Do we check our spiritual blind spots? They are hard for us to see, but God sees them and others may see them as well. Do we show any of these things in our lives? Pride, self-righteousness, prejudice, unforgiveness, fear, or a lack of faith. Let’s be open to the Holy Spirit working in our lives, changing us, removing our blind spots and bringing us even more into the light.
May God bless you in the week ahead