ALPHA MAAMA (A.M.)

 SAPATE MA’ASI 8, 2026

TEUTALONOME 28-29; MA’AKE 8:22-26

Your physical eyes can be wide open even while the eyes of your heart are sadly blind.

‘Oku malava pe ke ‘ā lelei ho mata fakamatelie, ka kui ‘a e mata ho laumalie.

During my time in seminary, Luella and I were houseparents at a school for the blind. We lived with about fifteen boys who either had been blind from birth or had become blind due to some kind of accident. We experienced firsthand the enormity of this physical deficit. We saw how it impacted every area of our boys' lives. We also witnessed the brilliant things our boys were taught so that they could do almost everything a sighted boy could do.

But there is a set of eyes dramatically more important than your physical eyes. A human being's most important sight comes from the eyes of the heart. Spiritual blindness is a life-destroying tragedy. If you are physically blind, you can forge a fairly normal existence, doing in your own way the things that sighted people do. But you cannot be spiritually blind and live well.

Hear the words of Moses:

Moses summoned all Israel and said to them: "You have seen all that the LORD did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land, the great trials that your eyes saw, the signs, and those great wonders. But to this day the LORD has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear." (Deut. 29:2-4)

Moses makes a distinction that is important to understand. He points to a fault line that divides humanity. He says the Israelites saw with their physical eyes all that God had done for them, but they did not see these great wonders with the eyes of their heart. You can see and be blind at the same time. God's children saw the mighty wonders God had performed on their behalf, but they did not see (understand) the full spiritual significance of those wonders. Moses explains why they were blind to the spiritual glories behind the physical glories. When you are born, your physical eyes open; progressively, you gain clear vision. But it takes an act of divine grace to open the eyes of your heart to deep and wonderful spiritual mysteries.

Apart from an act of divine grace opening your eyes, you can look at wonderful things in creation but not see the glory of the one who has designed those things and set them in place. Without being visited by eye-opening grace, you can read the words on the physical page of the Bible but not understand the spiritual realities those words reveal.

If your eyes are open to the glories of God in creation and the spiritual mysteries revealed in God's word, know that you have been visited by divine grace. God has done for you what you could have never done for yourself. He has opened the eyes of your heart so that you would see him in all his glory, know his redeeming fullness, and surrender your life to him. It is an eternally glorious thing to be visited by the divine optometrist.