Seeing Nothing With Open Eyes

Acts 9:8

Saul rose from the ground, and although his eyes were opened, he saw nothing. So they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus.

After God had stopped Saul in his tracks with a blinding vision and directed him as to what to do next, then Saul opened his eyes. And what did he see? He saw - nothing. His eyes were open and he perceived nothing.

This is the condition of every human child who is born into the world. Their eyes are open but they see nothing with comprehension or understanding. They are a blank page upon which the impressions and patterns of light begin their work, and the mystery of the brain begins to categorize and sort them into the visual perception that is common to most of us.

As all children are born into the death of Adam, separate from the light of God’s Spirit, they can know only darkness from the womb. By means of godly parents seeds may be planted to gestate in that darkness. They fall to the dead earth and die, waiting that moment when they are called forth by the warmth and light of the Son. But it is nevertheless darkness that fills all that come into the world.

Our children are born lost. They are born blind. What a great act of trust and love for God it must therefore be for Christians to become parents at all. What hope there is in it! What sense of joy there must be in anticipation of the possibility of the grace of God bringing into the everlasting kingdom another precious little one of Christ’s.

Yet the path by which they may come is through the darkness. We must all be conceived and initiated first in the valley of the shadow of death. We must all be in darkness before we know the light. We must all be blind to the things of heaven and be captives of the things below. A veritable storm of twisted perception and information assails the forming minds and hearts of babies. Their lostness is sealed the moment it begins to pour in, and confirmed with every new piece of information. They come into a godless, lightless world and stumble in darkness all of their days unless and until God gives them sight.

And when He does, the whole process starts all over again. When they are reborn of the Spirit of God their eyes are opened and, like Saul, they see nothing. But then the Spirit of God in them begins His work of reinterpreting and illuminating all that God has made. It is good. It is good that they no longer see the things that for so long deceived them. Their perception is now a blank upon which God can begin to write the Truth. They will see what He shows them. Their eyes will be trained to let in the light and to ignore the darkness in which they had previously moved.