Then he touched their eyes and said, “Let it be done for you according to your faith.” 
And their eyes were opened. 

Matthew 9:27-31

My fiancé is blind in one eye due to a car accident he was in several years ago, and I often wonder what his experience of the world would be like if he could see out of that eye again.

Can you imagine what the two blind men experienced when Jesus healed them, allowing them to see again? The Bible doesn’t tell us any details about whether they were born blind, whether they had lost their sight after a period of time, or whether they were blind in one eye or both.

But I can only imagine what it must have been like for them to suddenly see the world around them. Who or what did they see first? Certainly they saw Jesus for the first time. I like to imagine them drinking in the world around them with their eyes, as they hungrily and joyfully saw everything around them. They apparently couldn’t contain their excitement about the miraculous restoration of their sight because Scripture says they went out and spread word about Jesus even after he told them to keep it to themselves.

The only experience I have that is even comparable to this is that a few years ago, I got a new pair of glasses. I remember driving down the road shortly afterward, astounded at how clear everything was around me. I could see the trees and the landscape I was passing more clearly, I could read the signs more easily, and I was able to see things further away. I couldn’t believe how many things I had been missing, and I kept lowering my glasses and putting them on again to compare my natural sight with the sight I had with the glasses on. It was remarkable, and I felt like my sight had been restored!

Like me, you may require glasses to read this blog post. Or you may be one of the lucky ones who still has 20/20 vision without the aid of glasses or contacts. But all of us—no matter how old we are or how healthy—still need another kind of sight. The kind of sight I’m talking about is spiritual.

When we read the Bible, our eyes are sometimes suddenly opened to spiritual insights or we are convicted by a particular passage. We may suddenly realize we have a long way to go spiritually in one area or another. Or we may have the sudden recognition that God is doing for us what we could not possible do ourselves. We have a spiritual awakening, and the world suddenly looks different from our new perspective. Our spiritual sight is suddenly open, and we finally see what God wants us to see.

I have had many spiritual awakenings, but one that comes to mind now is the sudden realization I had several years ago. I had been working part-time at the local Catholic Charities, and one of my favorite parts of the job was helping the homeless in the warming center during the winter months. I crocheted and knitted hats and scarves for them, I ate with them in the soup kitchen, and I spent time talking to them and listening to their stories.

Then one day when I was visiting my mom in the nursing home where she lives, I had a sudden awakening—that I had a homeless person in my own family that I needed to be helping and the homeless person was my own mother! She no longer had her own home anymore. Sure, she had a roof over her head and food to eat. But she essentially was—and still is—without her own home, dependent on others for her daily sustenance. The sudden realization led me to more action—I started spending more time with her. After all, I was willing to sit down and spend time with the homeless in the warming center. Why not my own mother?

Spiritual awakenings are like that—receiving sudden, or not so sudden, spiritual sight. Ideally, they call you to some kind of action, to live out your faith in a deeper way. And sometimes when those spiritual insights come, they are uncomfortable. The one I had with regard to my mother was like that. It was uncomfortable because I realized that while I was willing to spend time with homeless people I didn’t know, I wasn’t spending enough time with the homeless person right in front of my eyes. I felt ashamed because I had been spiritually blind. But once I received that awakening, I asked God for forgiveness and started spending more time with her.

Is there an area in your life where you might need a spiritual wake-up call? Where your vision may need to be healed? Pray to God that he reveals it to you—that he heals your spiritual blindness.

Lord, please heal my spiritual blindness. Reveal to me the areas where you want me to grow spiritually, and give me the courage to make the changes you are calling me to make in my life.