Color-blind

By Pastor Bert Hitchcock

I’ve never been color-blind. But when going through an extensive eye-exam, I came to understand how crippling that would be. I breezed through dozens of pages with numbers identifiable by the difference in the colored dots. But just when I thought “this is easy” the difference in the colors became almost indistinguishable. And suddenly I realized how crippling this would be: to know those dots meant something, but to have no clue what it was. And for a color-blind person the limitation might be as profound as not being able to distinguish a red light from a green light!

Recently, I have seen several videos showing someone receiving special glasses, which apparently enable the color-blind person to see colors for the first time. And the response is always the same: grown men reduced, in an instant, to tears of joy, just by seeing things as they really are.

These days I feel somewhat spiritually color-blind. I see events all around me – dots of reality with different shades – but what do they mean? Something huge is going on, but I can’t figure out what it is. In some ways God’s people understand better than others, for God’s Word tells us how He has used history to accomplish His will. But we still do not know exactly what He is doing today. We are simply left with promises which give us hope: the promise of His will being done on earth as it is in heaven; the promise that all things, good and bad, come to us not by chance, but by his fatherly hand.

O but the day is coming when we will finally see clearly, as if through God’s color-blind glasses. In an instant, things will make sense – things we saw as mass confusion, we will see as the parts of God’s perfect plan. Things that are hidden will be made known. Things we now see only as a poor reflection, we will then know fully, as we are fully known. On that day, what God has been building will be seen in its perfection – nothing less than a new heaven and new earth in which God dwells in the midst of his people.

And so today, in our confusion and turmoil – in the most threatening situations – we need not be afraid. Even in the face of suffering and death – we do not grieve as those who have no hope. For the Lord will lead us safely through the valley of the shadow of death, until he brings us home. And then everything will make sense.