HIDDEN GIFTS
“Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.” - Ephesians 5:14
Yesterday by noon I had already video chatted with a good friend, had a separate video call with my parents, and had a video hangout planned with friends in the evening. Typically my weekends look a little different. I would have normally gone to mass in the morning, gotten my groceries for the next week, and be getting ready for a long run or bike ride. Perhaps I’d see friends in the evening or just relax at home by treating myself to a movie. My weekends tend to be a time of recovery from the week which doesn’t always include a huge amount of connection. I’ve realized how much connection I get just by going into the office every day. But now our lives are undergoing a shift. In the Gospel reading today, Jesus’ words are eerily relevant “We have to do the works of the one who sent me while it is day. Night is coming when no one can work.”. For each of us, is this a time of “day” or “night”?
In the first reading, Samuel is told that “Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance but the LORD looks into the heart.” The disciples and the Pharisees all look at the man born blind and assume that he or his parents have sinned, and he has earned his “affliction.” But Jesus explains, “Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.” Man (the disciples and Pharisees) sees the man as a sinner, but God sees the man as an instrument of light. It is the man’s blindness that is actually his gift that enables Jesus’ miracle.
Lent is about going into the desert. Perhaps this time of isolation is a forced desert. Everyone’s likely looks a little different. Perhaps yours is having to juggle caring for your children while you try to work from home, perhaps you have lost your job altogether, perhaps you or a loved one are sick, or perhaps yours is similar to mine where you must learn to deal with a different flavor of loneliness. Whatever your situation, I think we are all united in dealing with uncertainty and anxiety, experiencing much less connection or a different kind of connection, and learning what it looks like to not go stir crazy.
When I think of going into the physical desert, at first it is hard. So little green, no birds chirping, no water flowing - all the things that normally bring me peace. But after some time, an extravagant beauty unfolds. The silence is life giving, the simple landscape begins to reveal a deeper beauty such as the subtle variations in color and structure of rock formations or the mirages that form over the expanse as heat variations distort the light waves. I wonder if this new way of life that we are called to live is a gift - just as the man’s blindness was his gift so that he could be a miracle and light for others. As we lean into this new way of life, what might we find? Will we find ourselves connecting more with those we love over the phone or video calls instead of waiting until the day in the week or month that we scheduled a dinner? Will we find ourselves growing in love and appreciation for the people in our lives that truly matter? Will we truly be forced to see what brings us life vs. what numbs us? It is hard to know. Unlike the Pharisees’ interrogation of the man born blind and his parents, we don’t have the option to reason ourselves into an answer. Instead, maybe we are called to lean in, to trust, to be people of light, to know that the desert always reveals a previously unseen beauty, to change our perspective into seeing our afflictions - blindness, sickness, isolation, financial struggles - instead as a gift, for in the end they may be what God needed to perform a miracle to reveal light. In this time of change and uncertainty, may we ponder this possibility in our hearts as we start on a new week.
Joan Ervin