I had a pretty interesting night tonight. I have seen numerous rainbows during my lifetime, but I saw the most amazing one of my life tonight as I drove home. But you know what? I was even more amazed that nobody around me seemed to be able to see it!
How can these people not see this I wondered! Perhaps they just don't care?
There was a woman in the car on my right with bright blue hair doing some kind of ballet to some really horrible and really loud music (while she drove). There was a woman in front of her driving a car with stickers all over it, wearing black, with tons of metal rivets in her nose, lips, cheeks, ears, eyebrows, blah, blah, blah, who was literally screaming at the guy on the radio about some comment he had just made. There were three business guys in the car next to me, all three on the phone looking around at the other drivers. There was a big guy in the truck in front of them looking bored to death talking on the phone, while resting his head ON his phone, while looking up at the roof of his truck. There were people at the gas station on the left, pumping their gas, paying for their gas, buying drinks and snacks, each one clueless as to the wonderful sight just above the store facade. I saw young people, old people, happy people, grumpy people, individual people and people in groups.
I looked back at the rainbow and was amazed that it took up about a third of my windshield. I looked around again, and thought that people must be trying NOT to see it!
I started watching everyone around me to see how long it would take for them to notice it. I must have passed about eighty cars within a few blocks, all of which had this amazing rainbow blazed across their windshield, but nobody, I mean NOBODY was even looking in that direction!
I was reminded of a beautiful sunset I saw on Maui. Nobody noticed that either. People pay money to fly to Hawaii and walk on the sand, and look at the palm trees, and to watch the sunsets! I was amazed at this one sunset while we were walking in Lahaina, but I was even more amazed that this beautiful streaming light covered the entire western sky, and nobody seemed to notice it. After I ran to the concrete rail at the end of the road and started snapping photos, people noticed me taking photos, and THEN saw the sunset. But that amazed me at the time that everyone was walking and driving past this amazing sight and didn't notice it.
This rainbow tonight though, was truly an amazing rainbow. The colors on the left of the rainbow looked like several other rainbows I've seen, but the colors on the right started again, with the same colors on the left. I've seen a triple rainbow in Hawaii, with some space between each of them, but this was the first rainbow that ran into the next rainbow with no space in between.
The only person I couldn't be sure of was the women in the car directly in front of me, because she wasn't on the phone, and I couldn't see well enough to see where her eyes were looking, but I could see that her head was facing forward, which I quite liked, mostly because she was driving forward.
I was reminded of several verses that I had read this week during various different studies I was doing. I had been doing several different studies, but in each study I kept running across people that were blind, or that weren't blind but that couldn't see the things right in front of them.
Spiritual blindness is linked to the numerous metaphors throughout the Bible where light represents spiritual sight and blindness represents spiritual blindness. The rainbow, and sunsets and sunrises, impress me with how beautiful light and sight can be. It seems to me that spiritual sight is all that much more beautiful than just about anything we can experience here on this planet with mere physical sight and visible light.
Look at these verses and compare the similarities between various situations where people are blind, or in the dark spiritually.
Matthew 6:22-23
“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light.
But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.
If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
Matthew 13:15
For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears,
and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.’
Mark 8:18-19
Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear?
And don’t you remember?
When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?”
Mark 8:23-25
He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village.
When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, “Do you see anything?”
He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.”
Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes.
Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.
Mark 14:40-42
When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy.
They did not know what to say to him.
Returning the third time, he said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting?
Enough! The hour has come. Look, the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.
Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!”
Luke 16:15
He said to them, “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts.
What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight.
Luke 19:41-44
As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said,
“If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—
but now it is hidden from your eyes.
The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle
you and hem you in on every side.
They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls.
They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”
Luke 24:30-32
When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them.
Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight.
They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on
the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”
Luke 4:35
Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’?
I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.
John 9:6-7
Having said this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes.
“Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means Sent).
So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.
John 12:40
“He has blinded their eyes and deadened their hearts, so they can neither see with their eyes,
nor understand with their hearts, nor turn—and I would heal them.”
Isaiah 6:10 Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull
and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”
2 Corinthians 4:18
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.
For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
Ephesians 1:18
I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know
the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,...
Acts 2:1-24
When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.
Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house
where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to
rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues
as the Spirit enabled them.
Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven.
When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard
them speaking in his own language. Utterly amazed, they asked: “Are not all these men
who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own
native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia,
Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from
Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring
the wonders of God in our own tongues!” Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another,
“What does this mean?”
Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”
Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd:
“Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully
to what I say. These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning!
No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: “‘In the last days, God says,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.
Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
and they will prophesy. I will show wonders in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned
to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.
And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’
“Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by
miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know.
This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you,
with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him
from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible
for death to keep its hold on him.
We (humans) seem to be blind most of the time, and the few times that we aren't blind,
we don't seem to understand what it is that we are seeing!
Some of those present at Pentecost seemed to understand that they were witnessing a miracle, because people from different lands could each hear the words clearly in their own language. Others thought that the disciples were drunk. One might wonder if these two groups of people were seeing the same events.
I wonder about this blindness issue on nearly a daily basis. Evolutionists and Creationists look at the same data and come up with radically different conclusions. People look at the scriptures and like the Presbyterians and the Episcopalians this past week, seem to think that the Bible supports homosexual priests, ministers, and bishops. There isn't a single verse anywhere in the Bible that would even come close to supporting a homosexual lifestyle, forget homosexual ministers! Or a lifestyle of sexual immorality. Or adultery. There are verses explaining that a marriage is made up of a "wife" and a "husband". There is also the example of Sodom and Gomorrah. So why can's some others see it? Basically, some are spiritually blind and some have spiritual eyes. We gain our sight slowly as our spiritual growth develops, but for many, there is no spiritual growth. Why? Because it takes prayer, and study, and meditation, and living, and thinking, and being in communion with God, for spiritual growth to take place. Many people are too busy to grow spiritually so they grow carnally or worldly. Some are not too busy to grow spiritually, they just don't care so they stagnate and die spiritually.
For most... just like the people driving home tonight that missed the incredible rainbow, it is not actually that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, they just weren't paying attention. Some little distraction got in their way. They were looking at their phone, the people in the car with them, the light, people walking down the street, the traffic, etc.
The same thing happens spiritually. People have their jobs, their activities, their day to day worries, and they just don't look at the scriptures OR towards prayer. They just don't think about it.
