It is a tender thing, the eyes. A veil of flesh so thin, yet by it we take in the light of the sun, the face of a loved one, the words on a page. When that veil is troubled and the surgeons have done their careful work, you sit in the afterward and wonder whether the mist will lift. You strain to catch the first clear outline and the heart asks quietly, "Shall I see plainly again?" The Lord who fashioned the eye, who painted the iris with its thousand subtle hues and hung the retina finer than any tapestry, He has not forgotten you. The Great Physician entered many a sickroom, and He never once passed a blind man on the road without turning aside. It is His way to heal.
If your sight came back all at once, you would leap and laugh and tell everyone. But often our Lord does His restoring work by degrees, a little sharpness returning here, a little cloud thinning there, and the waiting becomes its own trial. Do not think the gradual work means He is absent. The sun rises by slow degrees, yet it rises surely. A crop pushes through the soil unseen before the green blade appears, but all the while life is stirring in the dark. Beneath the bandage, beneath the dimness, the same power that once made clay and spread it upon blind eyes and sent the man to wash in Siloam, that power is present still. He who gave you the first gift of sight is able to renew it, and He is not in a hurry, for He is perfecting that which concerns you.
The eye is a small member, but how much of life travels through it. And our Lord knows that. When He walked among us, the Gospel record brims with cures. Luke the beloved physician noted them with a trained eye, but he saw something more than medicine, he saw that the power of Christ is mainly a power to heal. Not to destroy, not to condemn, but to mend what is broken. The same hands that took Peter's mother-in-law by the grasp and lifted her out of the fever, those hands were nailed for you, and they are stretched out still. He does not stand aloof from the sickroom. He came where the fever polluted the air; He comes where anxiety hangs thick. If the trouble has entered your house, the Physician has entered with it.
And while you wait, let this be your comfort: the Lord would not have given you eyes at all if He meant to cast you off. The very longing for restored sight is a prayer He Himself has planted. A man blind from birth might scarcely know what he misses, but you have seen the faces of your dear ones, and you wish to see them clearly again. That wish is the echo of His own kindness. He who gave you the love of light will not mock you with perpetual shadow. Even now, in the dimness, you possess a sight that no surgeon's knife can touch, the inward eye that beholds the Savior. Was it not a greater wonder when He opened the eyes of the soul? To see sin forgiven, to see Christ crucified and risen, to see the Father's face turned toward you in peace, this is the seeing that outlasts the wearing of the body. If you can perceive Him by faith, then the eyes of your heart are sound, and the outward eye will serve as long as He has need of it.
The Tree of Life in the Paradise above bears leaves for the healing of the nations. Picture that, leaves, such common things, yet full of medicine. Your healing may come like a leaf floating down from the hand of God, quiet and without fanfare. It may come through the skill of surgeons, through rest, through the slow knitting of delicate fibers. It may come in a moment of unexpected clarity when you rise one morning and realize the fog has rolled back. But come it will, in His time and His way, for the Lord never begins a work of mercy only to leave it half-done. He who forgave your iniquities will not withhold the lesser gift of healing your diseases. The soul's pardon is the greater miracle, already accomplished; the body's mending is the smaller, and He will not grudge it.
Do not let the dimness of the present hour persuade you that He has turned away. A love letter may come in a black-edged envelope, yet inside the words are tender. Your present trial is the envelope; the love of Christ is the message sealed within. He is training you to lean upon Him, to find that even in the half-light He is a sure companion. Did not the Psalmist say, "The Lord is my light"? Not merely the Lord gives light, but He Himself is the light. If you have Him, you have what every eye was made to behold.
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Lord Jesus, You who did open the eyes of the blind and straighten the twisted limbs, look upon this dear one who waits upon You for the restoring of sight. You know the worry that creeps in with the dusk, the fear that knocks at the door of the heart. Quiet it with Your own peace. Let the delicate work begun by the surgeon's hand be carried to completion by Your creative power. Grant patience in the waiting and glimmers of hope in the meantime. And if the healing tarries, let the inward vision grow sharper still, that seeing You by faith, this beloved soul may rest content, knowing that one day, in the land where the Lamb is the light, every eye shall see Him as He is. Until then, hold them fast. Amen.