john on Eyesight

James Elkins talks about how even the sense of sight is more complicated than we might believe: “Our eyes are not ours to command; they roam where they will and then tell us they have only been where ...

The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.

I have walked with people whose eyes are full of light, but who see nothing in wood, sea, or sky, nothing in city streets, nothing in books.... It were better far to sail forever in the night of blind...

By the way, I have terrible eyesight. When I don’t have my glasses on, I can see shapes and forms and colors, but not much else. And that’s sort of what I think it’s like to look at God without Jesus....

Jesus doesn’t just use the shepherd metaphor when he refers to himself as the door. Over and over in the Bible, we are compared to sheep. Some people think it’s heartwarming. But I hate to tell you, i...

The story of young Matthew Huffman came across my desk the week I was writing this chapter. He was the six-year-old son of missionaries in Salvador, Brazil. One morning he began to complain of fever. ...

“If your eye causes you to sin…” is one of the boldest phrases from the mouth of Jesus, appearing three times in the gospels. Our eyes not only leads us into sinful behaviors, but also to take in sinf...

In Annie Dillard's Pulitzer Prize winning book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, she mentioned the work of Marius Von Senden who became curious about the effect it had on people who had been born blind to...

Vision is the ability to see God’s presence, to perceive God’s power, to focus on God’s plan In spite of the obstacles….Vision is the ability to see above and beyond the majority. Vision is perception...

When my grandparents were in their eighties, their television developed a fault that made the screen permanently bright green. It was good for viewing garden shows or nature programs, but it was prett...

In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

If I had a choice, I would still choose to remain blind... for when I die, the first face I will ever see will be the face of my blessed Savior.

Two kinds of blindness are easily combined so that those who do not see really appear to see what is not.

Helen Keller, the blind-and-deaf woman who made history by learning to overcome her disabilities, was once asked if there was anything worse than being blind. She answered, “Oh yes! There is something...

For fifty-one years Bob Edens was blind. He couldn’t see a thing. His world was a black hall of sounds and smells. He felt his way through five decades of darkness. And then, he could see. A skilled s...

Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes.

One night a friend asked his handicapped son, “Daniel, when you see Jesus looking at you, what do you see in His eyes?” After a pause, the boy replied,  “His eyes are filled with tears, Dad.”  “...

What are blind spots? They are areas in which people continually fail to see themselves or their situation realistically.

How we praise and thank You for the holy Scriptures which You have caused to be written for our learning. Thank You for Your written Word, which reveals to us the living Word of God, in the Person of ...

Lord, you came to dwell among us, yet we did not recognize you. We still fail to recognize you. You show up in unexpected places and through unexpected people. We fail to see you in the people who are...

Blind in heart since my birth, I come to you, Light of the World...Let me live as a child of light.

God of mercy, we ignore the needs of people around us all too often. We get caught up in our own issues and forget that there are millions of people who struggle for basic necessities on a daily basis...

Dear Lord, I pray that You would open my mind to the truth of Your Word by means of the Holy Spirit. Open my eyes to see Jesus. Open my heart to love Him more and more. Open my will to do only that wh...

Amazing grace How sweet the sound. That saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, But now am found. Was blind, but now I see. Lord of all, you have called us toward a new way of life. Give...

Give us, Lord, a clear vision of the truth, faith in your power, and confident assurance of your love.

Most holy God, we continuously lose sight of your sovereign rule over our world and in our lives, and our failing vision obscures every aspect of our lives. So we come to you for grace. Forgive us for...

O gracious and holy God, give us diligence to seek you, wisdom to perceive you, and patience to wait for you. Grant us, O God, a mind to meditate on you, eyes to behold you, ears to listen for your ...

We may remark in passing that to be blind and beloved may, in this world where nothing is perfect, be among the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness. The supreme happiness in life is the assura...

I remember once near Interlaken waiting for days to see the Jungfrau which was hidden in mists. People told me it was there, and I should have been a fool to doubt their word, for those who told me li...

We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to r...