Open The Eyes Of My Heart, Lord!
LENT 2025 DEVOTIONAL:
John 9:1-41 (NIV)
(Jonathan Huang, Director of Administry)
Today’s passage gives an account of Jesus healing a man who was blind from birth. Many had attributed this affliction to sin, either the man’s, or his parents’. Jesus said that it was neither, and declared that “this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him” (v3).
The Pharisees were perplexed. Jesus had performed this miracle on the Sabbath! They simply could not believe that He was a godly man. Even after the blind man himself testified to Jesus’ goodness, the Pharisees still did not believe.
It seems clear that John was contrasting the blindness of sight with the blindness of the Pharisees’ hearts. We read in the surrounding chapters a series of exchanges with the Pharisees regarding Jesus’ identity and actions. John demonstrated Jesus’ divinity through His teachings and actions, including miracles such as this one. Simultaneously John showed Christ’s rejection by the religious people of the day.
What good is physical sight if in having the ability to read and study the scriptures we lack the ability to believe with our hearts? Perhaps their physical sight had in fact blinded the Pharisees’ hearts.
I grew up in a faithful Christian family, and read the scriptures daily, sometimes even zealously. However, I had not truly believed, just like the Pharisees. It was only after a spiritual awakening in my teenage years that I finally came to a genuine faith in Christ.
It was the same for John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, who, though being a Christian and Anglican priest for many years, had not truly believed. It was only on that fateful day at Aldersgate Street that Wesley came to believe in Jesus. He described his life-changing experience in these words, “while the leader was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ alone for salvation.”
In the book “The Little Prince”, the fox shares his secret – that “one sees only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.” Spiritual blindness is a condition of the heart, and in this journey to the cross during Lent, we must examine ourselves, to ask God to remove the blindness in our hearts that prevents us from truly perceiving Christ.
My prayer: “Oh God, please remove my blindness, and allow me to seek you with all my heart. May I constantly seek your help to heal me so that others may say that the good works of God were displayed in my life. Lord I believe, help my unbelief!”
Lord we believe, help our unbelief! Amen.
Reflection Questions:
1. Reflect on the passage today – what is God opening the eyes of your heart to?
2. Our blind spots are hard to detect – are there trusted spiritual friends you can give permission to in order to keep you in check?
3. Pray for yourself, and all your friends and loved ones, to receive sight from the Lord, so that the “works of the Lord might be displayed” in all of them!
