You speak of your eyesight, and I can feel the ache that rises when the lights begin to dim and the pages grow misty. It is a hard thing to watch the body’s windows cloud over while the world outside remains so bright. Yet I want to whisper something into your ear: the same Lord who made the eye is not far from its trouble. He is no stranger to the weak and the failing frame. When His power was present to heal, it was not like a distant thunderclap; it was the near hand of a familiar physician, touching the fevered skin, whispering to the paralyzed limb, “Be whole.” And that power has not evaporated with the centuries. It still streams from the throne where the Lamb sits, where the leaves of the tree are for the healing of all that aches.
Do you remember the poor man carried by his friends, let down through the roof? He had not a finger to stretch toward Jesus, yet the first word out of the Savior’s mouth was not about his shattered body but about his soul: “Your sins are forgiven you.” Often our Lord treats the deeper wound before He mends the outward one, because He knows that the root of all our sorrow is a broken fellowship, and once that is set right, all other mending follows in its season. So do not think your present weakness a sign of His distance. Far from it. The very prayer you breathed is proof that He is coaxing your heart to lean upon Him. “Behold, he prays”, that is the surest token mercy is near. The Lord who heard that man’s silent need through the roof-tiles hears you now, and He is no less tender.
Perhaps you fear that your sight will fail altogether, or that this body will never again know the ease it once had. I will not pretend that all our sicknesses lift in an instant. Some of the choicest saints I have ever known have carried bodily burdens to the grave. Yet they were never alone in their carrying. The fever may linger in the house, but if Jesus enters in, the house becomes a palace. His presence is the real health of our spirits, and sometimes He lets the outward frame stay frail so that we may learn to fix our gaze where the eye does not grow dim. There is a day coming when we shall need no spectacles, no surgeon’s hand, no anxious peering at the medicine bottle. The Tree of Life grows on both sides of that river, and its leaves are not only for the body’s healing but for the entire undoing of what sin has broken. Until then, He does not scold us for asking again and again. A child may cry many times in the night, and the father does not tire of rising.
Take your complaint to Him as often as it stings. Tell Him your eyes are weary. Tell Him the frame feels fragile. He never turns a deaf ear to the voice of His own child. And while you wait, look at what remains: you can still behold Him by faith. You can still see the cross, still see the empty tomb, still trace the outlines of His love in every mercy around you. That spiritual sight, once given, will never dim, and one day it will swallow up all darkness in a flood of uncreated light.
Let me join my heart with yours now in the quiet, and may the Lord hear our cry.
Gracious Master, Your touch is as gentle as it is strong. Come near to Your dear child who feels the shadow of infirmity and fears the loss of sight. Spread the hem of Your garment over this weary frame and let healing virtue flow where it is needed. Give patience when the answer tarries, and let the eyes of faith grow brighter while the outward eyes grow dull. Hold up the drooping head with the comfort of sins forgiven and a home prepared. In the end, bring us all to that place where the inhabitants no more say, “I am sick,” and where we shall see You without a veil. We ask it in the name of Jesus, our Redeemer and our endless portion. Amen.