Blinders
Have you ever played a game where you had to wear a blindfold?
It's a rather disorienting, and fascinating experience.
In college my roommate was blind.
Dave was an exceptional human being. He was an athlete who was a proficient Hockey Goalie, Downhill Skier, and he played for a para Olympic team--that he invited his other roomies--to come and play.
The game was set on a volleyball court's dimensions, minus the net. The lines were taped with a string underneath the tape. There were 3 on a team, and if you think of the court divided in three sections horizontally where the 3 players would stand on the two sections at the ends, and the section in the middle (where the net would usually go) it was open.
The goal was to take the medicine ball sized ball--which has 2 bells in it--and throw it so that it was on the ground by the time it was entering the middle section, and get it past the 3 players and cross the back line. When you did so, your team received a point. If you were playing defense, you could lay down and stretch out to try and stop the ball. When you did so, it was your teams turn to throw.
Here's the catch.
Folks of all sight abilities could play, but to even the playing field, all players wore blindfolds.
Since none of us could see, we had to go about playing the game much more strategically, and communicating as a team was based on listening to each other, tapping the floor with our hands to show position, and to feel the raised lines to find our placement. If we didn't listen, we took a fast moving ball in the face, or lost a point.
It was similar to playing dodge-ball in quicksand, on a chess board, while trying to not get run over by a killer bowling ball. It was fun, it was also nothing like I imagined it to be.
The whole game, which I thought would be an adrenaline rush of fast paced frenzy, was more like the anticipation of baseball in a pitcher's duel, with the reality that this ball could really clean your clock.
It's hard to describe the re-orientation that my senses had to go through in order to play this game, even after being able to 'watch' it, it was nothing like actually getting to play.
I think that this is what God does with us.
Isaiah 55: 6-9 says,
“Seek the Lord while he may be found;
call upon him while he is near;
let the wicked forsake his way,
and the unrighteous man his thoughts;
let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts."
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+55&version=ESV
We don't see, hear, or have a heart that is able to respond to God like God--we respond like humans who are sinners, and deal with our flesh getting in the way.
Wouldn't you agree?
Lately we have been talking about Jesus' top 3 disciplemaking conversations, and my hope is that we are more clearly realizing this disconnect between the way that God see's things, and the way we see things.
Are you willing to let God change you?
Are you willing to allow God to teach you to see, hear, and respond obediently to His leading?
It will be disorienting. We will have to trust God and walk in faith. But,
God is good.
Think:
“Thus says the Lord who made the earth, the Lord who formed it to establish it—the Lord is his name: Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known." Jeremiah 33:2-3
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=jer+33&version=ESV
Let's take next steps with Jesus, Together!
It's a rather disorienting, and fascinating experience.
In college my roommate was blind.
Dave was an exceptional human being. He was an athlete who was a proficient Hockey Goalie, Downhill Skier, and he played for a para Olympic team--that he invited his other roomies--to come and play.
The game was set on a volleyball court's dimensions, minus the net. The lines were taped with a string underneath the tape. There were 3 on a team, and if you think of the court divided in three sections horizontally where the 3 players would stand on the two sections at the ends, and the section in the middle (where the net would usually go) it was open.
The goal was to take the medicine ball sized ball--which has 2 bells in it--and throw it so that it was on the ground by the time it was entering the middle section, and get it past the 3 players and cross the back line. When you did so, your team received a point. If you were playing defense, you could lay down and stretch out to try and stop the ball. When you did so, it was your teams turn to throw.
Here's the catch.
Folks of all sight abilities could play, but to even the playing field, all players wore blindfolds.
Since none of us could see, we had to go about playing the game much more strategically, and communicating as a team was based on listening to each other, tapping the floor with our hands to show position, and to feel the raised lines to find our placement. If we didn't listen, we took a fast moving ball in the face, or lost a point.
It was similar to playing dodge-ball in quicksand, on a chess board, while trying to not get run over by a killer bowling ball. It was fun, it was also nothing like I imagined it to be.
The whole game, which I thought would be an adrenaline rush of fast paced frenzy, was more like the anticipation of baseball in a pitcher's duel, with the reality that this ball could really clean your clock.
It's hard to describe the re-orientation that my senses had to go through in order to play this game, even after being able to 'watch' it, it was nothing like actually getting to play.
I think that this is what God does with us.
Isaiah 55: 6-9 says,
“Seek the Lord while he may be found;
call upon him while he is near;
let the wicked forsake his way,
and the unrighteous man his thoughts;
let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts."
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+55&version=ESV
We don't see, hear, or have a heart that is able to respond to God like God--we respond like humans who are sinners, and deal with our flesh getting in the way.
Wouldn't you agree?
Lately we have been talking about Jesus' top 3 disciplemaking conversations, and my hope is that we are more clearly realizing this disconnect between the way that God see's things, and the way we see things.
Are you willing to let God change you?
Are you willing to allow God to teach you to see, hear, and respond obediently to His leading?
It will be disorienting. We will have to trust God and walk in faith. But,
God is good.
Think:
“Thus says the Lord who made the earth, the Lord who formed it to establish it—the Lord is his name: Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known." Jeremiah 33:2-3
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=jer+33&version=ESV
Let's take next steps with Jesus, Together!
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