Who remembers the Magic Eye books? Those optical illusions many poured over for hours, desperate to find the hidden image or message? Well, here is a puzzle for you. Can you see anything at all in the picture?
Can you see a number hidden in the picture?
These optical puzzles can be fun for many as you zap the hidden in amongst the zig zag lines or curves or splodges of red or colour. They are for some a nightmare as they cannot see anything at all. Or how about this one, can you see the bee?
Have fun!
Many of us take our eyesight for granted and then find in later life it harder to cope with failing sight and other physical conditions. Lack of sight is more loss of independence, perhaps not being able to drive, or walk out safely, worried about finding our way round new places or missing steps in church. People living with guide dogs have found things a struggle in lockdown, as the dogs are not trained to observe 2 metres distance, neither do they know about the pandemic!
Sight is another in our challenges about our senses. It is important and without it life can grind down to being limited in our own homes as well as doors shut on so many forms of recreation. Talking books are a wonderful tool enabling reading to continue, but it will never replace the holding of a book and the smell of its pages, as we thought yesterday. There are many gadgets for use in the kitchen and to enable cooking to take place but again our other senses, in particular smell, is another big player in giving freedom and independence.
How many of you have played the old Halloween game. Where blindfolded you are told alone with story teller of the gruesome, murderous tale where you have to put your hand into various things including an empty eye socket? There are always the squeamish reactions and it always provides a laugh especially when the victim realises the eye socket was just an orange! I have never seen this one done where the orange is smelt beforehand so the victim is on to it! Smell and eyesight are very much entwined together.
There is as much in the Scriptures about eyes as there is about smell and taste. It was the everyday that people knew about and could experience. After all many people didn't see or didn't see well. It was a problem they needed support, care and help to manage the everyday things, but apart from their loss of sight they would be in good health. It would also be known and recognised that older people could lose more of their sight and having once been independent now might rely on the care of others.
But sight is more than having sees to see with, it could also mean seeing something, understanding it? How many times have you said yourself when something is explained to you - ah I see! How many times do we search for something and fail to see it even though it is right there in front of us. Often we might not understand something, but ask for help and then we "see it" we are relieved but often embarrassed as it was so obvious. I bet Mary, mother of Our Lord must have thought she had overlooked the child Jesus on coming away from Jerusalem and going home, only to discover he was in Temple teaching.
John 9:1-12 (NRSV)
"9 As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3 Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. 4 We[a] must work the works of him who sent me[b] while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” 6 When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, 7 saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. 8 The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” 9 Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.” 10 But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” 11 He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” 12 They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”
Now, we do not generally hold to the fact, that the man or his parents had sinned, though I have come across people who still believe that God deliberately removes someone health to reveal a truth. The God I believe in doesn't do that, isn't about that at all. But how well do we look, how well do we see the things of God? How well are we in touch with God? Are we seeing things with eyes which see, that which is there to be seen? And if we see do we react to it?
One of things I have seen in St Athan during part of the latter part of lockdown, was the emergence of a woman who collects food daily from the supermarkets and it is brought back to the village is available free of charge to any who have need, with no questions asked anywhere in the vicinity. This lady saw a real need and decided with the Foodbank closed to act upon it and set up this service to others. She saw, and did something positive about it.
Have you "seen" in lockdown and done something about it? It could be a phone call about someone who you are worried about, someone whom you care for. It could be looking into the future and addressing the issue, volunteering to be a steward so churches can be opened where there hasn't been a vision beforehand. It could be seeing the need and responding in the only way you can but without being prompted or asked. It is about having eyes to see and embracing it however you can, in isolation or not as there is always a way.
