Willfully Blind

Isaiah 59:7–13

7 Their feet run to evil,

And they make haste to shed innocent blood:

Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity;

Wasting and destruction are in their paths.

8 The way of peace they know not;

And there is no judgment in their goings:

They have made them crooked paths:

Whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace.

9 Therefore is judgment far from us,

Neither doth justice overtake us:

We wait for light, but behold obscurity;

For brightness, but we walk in darkness.

10 We grope for the wall like the blind,

And we grope as if we had no eyes:

We stumble at noonday as in the night;

We are in desolate places as dead men.

11 We roar all like bears,

And mourn sore like doves:

We look for judgment, but there is none;

For salvation, but it is far off from us.

12 For our transgressions are multiplied before thee,

And our sins testify against us:

For our transgressions are with us;

And as for our iniquities, we know them;

13 In transgressing and lying against the Lord,

And departing away from our God,

Speaking oppression and revolt,

Conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood.

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He was one of the most wealthy men I have ever known but you could not tell it by looking. He shopped at the thrift stores, ate at the cheapest dinners and squeezed his money so tight that if near him one might hear pictures of former presidents gasping for air. He was wise but about as miserly as one could get.

One day a group of us saw him with a black eye and asked of his welfare. Was he ok? Had he been in a fist fight? Did a dive into his pool of gold coins go wrong? (Scrooge McDuck reference in case you don’t know)

His reply to our question were words I will never forget. He said that he had needed to go downstairs and then explained with passion and profanity that he thought there no reason to turn on the lights and waste all that energy, the power bill was high enough. He attempted to go down the stairs blindly. He said, “I fell down the ________, ________, __________ stairs.” You fill in the blanks, or better yet don’t. This is a Bible blog.

Can you imagine that, one of the wealthiest men I have ever known willfully walking in the dark in order to save money. That may have saved cents but it didn’t make sense. He had eyes that could see, lamps to illuminate, power to light the lamps and yet he willingly walked in darkness. He was willfully blind!

I can’t help but read today’s passage from the prophets and see our world. It is a world that fights violence with violence like fighting fire with gasoline. Some Judges overlook crime creating chaos. There is little justice for the poor people who need it most. They run to riot leaving destruction in their wake.

Then we read it,

Isaiah 59:10

We grope for the wall like the blind,

and we grope as if we had no eyes:

we stumble at noonday as in the night;

we are in desolate places as dead men.

“…we grope as if we had no eyes”

“As if”, those words tell me a lot.

They tell me that sight was available but just not accessed. The ones to whom the prophet referred chose not to see. Isn’t this the world in which we live? Eyes that refuse to see injustice, ears that refuse to hear pleas for help, people shedding innocent blood and creating destruction.

There is a better way, a better life than what we are living. We don’t have to live in this darkness.

John 8:12

Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.

Lights turned off give no light.

Eyes unopened are always blind!

A Savior rejected obviously does not save.

We don’t have to be so blind.