To See What Others Don’t

Scripture: John 9.1-41; 1 Samuel 16.1-13


Why do some people see opportunities others miss? In the book Did You Spot the Gorilla? Psychologist Richard Wiseman describes an experiment that provides a clue:

Volunteers watched a 30-second video of two teams playing basketball. They were asked to count the number of times one of the teams passed the ball. What they weren’t told was that halfway through the video, a man dressed in a gorilla suit would run onto the court, stand in front of the camera, and beat his chest. Amazingly, only a few of the volunteers spotted the man in the gorilla suit. Most were so intent on counting passes that they completely missed the gorilla.

Wiseman concluded that most people go through life so focused on the task at hand they completely miss “gorilla” opportunities.

He gives the example of a team of 3M researchers who were trying to develop a high-strength adhesive. One of their attempts produced a product that was actually the opposite – a very low-strength adhesive. Most of the team thought the result was a failure, but one saw it as an opportunity. That failure became the glue on 3M Post-It Notes. We should all fail so well!

If we aren’t careful, we can be so fixated on the mundane, that we miss God-given opportunities of significance.

This really, is how Jesus explains this young man’s blindness in our Gospel reading. The disciples subscribed to the common explanation of misfortune in life, which was somebody sinned and God punished them for it. The disciples asked Jesus, “Who sinned, this young man or his parents, that he was born blind?” The disciples were trapped in the mundane. They looked, but they didn’t see.

Jesus said, “You’re looking at this all wrong. Don’t you see, this happened, not as a curse, but as an opportunity for God to display his goodness in this young man’s life.”

Then Jesus spit. There’s a good memory verse for the kids. They won’t have trouble remembering this one. Jesus spit into the mud and rubbed it on the young man’s eyes. I wonder if the guy had been deaf, was he worried that Jesus would spit in his ears. He’s thinking maybe he should have said it was his elbow. Regardless of the mechanics of the healing, Jesus sent the young man to wash up. When he did, he came home seeing. Wow.

We’re reading one of my favorite books of all time in our Good Books Discussion Group. The book is A Prayer for Owen Meany. It is a story of a diminutive young man with giant faith. Owen Meany doesn’t believe in coincidences. There are no coincidences. There is FATE. There is opportunity and missed opportunity. Owen Meany believes he is GOD’S INSTRUMENT. One of his favorite sayings is, “FAITH AND PRAYER. FAITH AND PRAYER. THEY WORK. THEY REALLY DO.”

How do you see your life? Is it day after day strung together in meaningless and unrelated events and duties? Or is your life a daily adventure, pregnant with possibilities and opportunities. Sometimes I get locked into the mundane. Sometimes I’ll hear a friend say to me, O we went to this concert on Saturday and it was amazing. Or I’ll hear someone say, “We took a drive to this state park and the snow on the trees was beautiful.” And I say to myself, Why didn’t I think of that? That’s better than what I did. There was a gorilla of an opportunity and I stayed home and counted floor tile.

You almost can’t overestimate the importance of a faith-filled approach to your life. Faith gives us eyes to see opportunity. Faith gives us God’s eyes. According to Kirbyjohn Caldwell, a spiritual entrepreneur is one “who uncovers that which is masquerading as truth in the world in order to reveal truth.” For many of us, the “truth” of our daily lives is monotony and dull routine. But it’s not! Monotony is simply what we have settled for; dull routine is what has masqueraded as life and truth.

We are like some hunters I know. They spend their time walking through the woods in ways that give them little chance to see what it is they wish to see – game. What I mean is, they walk too fast and too loud. And what’s worse, they spend much of their time staring at their feet because they are afraid they will fall down if they don’t watch their steps. When they are very lucky, they hear a noise above the noise of their own huffing and puffing, and they wonder if that flash was a deer. You have to walk and look at the same time. It takes practice and skill. It’s takes faith. As Owen Meany says, “FAITH TAKES PRACTICE.”

In the Old Testament story of Samuel looking for the next king, we read that Samuel sees the eldest son of Jesse and Samuel thinks his search for a new king is over. He thinks this because Eliab is tall, strong, good-looking, authoritative. God says, “No.” Keep looking. Underline this part in your scripture: “The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” Samuel kept looking and found David,
"a man after God's own heart."

Faith gives us eyes to see as God sees. Faith gives us eyes to see opportunity. When Jesus put mud on that young man’s eyes, God gave the man his eyes to replace the ones that did not work. If it was up to the disciples, the young man would have been left blind, futilely asking God what sin he had committed to deserve his fate. God wants to replace our blindness with sight for opportunities of goodness. Here’s another scripture to underline, in John 9.39: “Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.” The disciples are not the only ones stuck in the blindness of the mundane. The Pharisees, who thought they could see, were more blind. They strain out the gnat but they swallow the camel. Jesus called them “blind guides.”

As we grow up, one of the things we discover is that sin that once was so titillating becomes mundane. Badness becomes boring. When we realize we don’t have the answers to happiness in life, then perhaps we are ready to see what God wants us to see. Sometimes the answer to sinful living is simply, faithful eyes. Open your eyes and see what God is doing around you!