So Paul, standing before the council, addressed them as
follows: “Men of Athens, I notice that
you are very religious in every way, for as I was walking along I saw your
many shrines. And one of your altars had
this inscription on it: ‘To an Unknown God.’ This God, whom you worship without knowing, is
the one I’m telling you about. “He is the God who made the world
and everything in it. Since he is Lord
of heaven and earth, he doesn’t live in man-made temples, and human hands can’t
serve his needs—for he has no needs. He himself gives life and breath to everything,
and he satisfies every need. From one
man he created all the nations throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand when they should rise
and fall, and he determined their boundaries. “His purpose was for
the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find
him—though he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and exist. As some of
your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ And since this is true, we
shouldn’t think of God as an idol designed by craftsmen from gold or silver or
stone. “God overlooked people’s
ignorance about these things in earlier times, but now he commands everyone
everywhere to repent of their sins and turn to him. For he has set a day for
judging the world with justice by the man he has appointed, and he proved to
everyone who this is by raising him from the dead.” Acts 17:22-31
With deference (and no disdain) to the struggles faced
by the many who face the challenge of blindness, I wish to point to what Paul
described as a universal blindness worse (by far), than not having physical
eyesight. He points to spiritual
blindness, a malady so consequential, there is nothing worse in the
universe. Unsighted physically, we might
stumble; blinded spiritually, we are a total loss.
As a child I had no clear understanding of God’s image
stamped on my soul. I felt, but could
not articulate an inkling of being special – that there was something not-quite-me, yet defining me as unique, but not quite where I was
meant to be. That was a child’s innocent
understanding of longing to be connected to God, who created me. I understand now that was His image and
purpose, because of loss. With each step
away from that image it dimmed just a little more.
The apostle was trying to help the citizens of Athens
understand that their religious “bent”
was like a blind man feeling his way to
find God. They knew God was there, but
they couldn’t see Him, much like I felt the presence of His image stamped on my soul, but only vaguely
suspected it was something holy and good; I was on the verge of spiritual
blindness.
Paul could help the Athenians because he knew what it
was like to be spiritually blind. He
blindly flailed-away at Christ’s church, attempting to stamp out the darkness by
persecuting the Son of Light. When he
met the true light on the road to Damascus, Paul’s physical vision ended
temporarily, while his spiritual vision was undergoing surgery at the hand of
the Great Physician. When all was said
and done, Paul could say, along with John Newton: Once I was blind,
but now I can see.
For You Today
You were created
for that which is much greater than any of us experience in this life, complete
fellowship with God. We move in a
training ground for 70 or so years, sometimes stumbling in the darkness of a
wandering soul. But Jesus Christ opened
to us the bloody pathway to spiritual sight.
His blood cleanses us from sin when we confess His Lordship. It’s the exchange of our sin for His sight!
There
are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library. To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some
of these:
The End of Sacrifices and The Patience of God with
Spiritual Blindness
[1] Images: Pixabay.com Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©
