What do you see?
As I sit here writing, I find myself imagining the proverbial “coke bottle” glasses with the larger than life eyes peering through them to see the world. My uncle and best friend wore just such spectacles. Without them he was literally “blind as a bat.” Could there ever be an upside to such a condition?
One day, he sent me an email outlining one of the messages he had recently preached. It was entitled, “You Can Only See It With Your Eyes Shut.” Of course I was immediately drawn in. The long and short of the message was that we cannot see the great things of God with our natural eyes, but could only catch the heavenly vision with our eyes shut in prayer.
I am no zoologist, but I have heard it said that bats, for all practical purposes, are blind. They use a God given sonar system to bounce sound waves off of objects around them and thus navigate and catch food. I even heard one man say that a bat can fly through the moving blade of a fan without being struck. Not bad for a creature that is blind. In fact, I could not accomplish the same feat with 20/20 vision. I later found that they do indeed have great senses as I tried to chase a bat out of my home with a broom. I’m pretty good at hitting a moving ball with a wooden bat, but with all my best efforts, I never came close to hitting the creature. It outmaneuvered me every time.
I wonder if God created bats to be almost blind just so that we could learn how we are to find Him. When it comes to the spirit world, we are basically blind. Many Christians go through daily life completely unaware of an unseen Kingdom around them. They have no clue that they are surrounded by angels doing the will of God. There are visions that God would like us to have, but they will only be seen with ours eyes shut.
Acts 17:27 tells us “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.” Obviously God was not speaking of us finding Him with our natural eyes. He has given us a spiritual sonar system that is far superior to the human eye. In fact, it can see us through some of the whirling fans of life without a scratch on us if we learn to trust and navigate with it. Bats can even catch mosquitos in midair using their finally tuned senses. That is how tuned I want to become to the leading of The Spirit of God.
By Pastor Phil Lemke
