...less by sight

Teach me your way, O Lord, teach me your way!

Your guiding grace afford, teach me your way!

Help me to walk aright, more by faith, less by sight;

lead me with heavenly light, teach me your way.

---B. Mansell Ramsey, 1919

More by faith, less by sight. Is there anything we humans like less than not seeing? Whether it is a fear of the dark, the panic of a blindfold, or the frustration of low vision or driving through a pounding rainstorm, not seeing can leave us feeling helpless, and hopeless. Yet in scripture we are instructed to ‘walk by faith and not by sight.’ Could anything take us out of our comfort zone faster?

How might our lives change if we walked less by sight and more by faith? Would our decision-making process change? What judgments might we forgo, or at least suspend?  Would we experience others’ needs and problems in a different light? Would our dependence on God make us weak…or would it make us strong?

...defying and defining

Praise the One who breaks the darkness with a liberating light;

praise the One who frees the prisoners, turning blindness into sight.

Praise the One who preached the Gospel, healing every dread disease,

calming storms, and feeding thousands with the very Bread of peace.

---Rusty Edwards, 1987

Under cover of darkness. They kept me in the dark about their true intentions. Mysterious as the dark side of the moon. Are you afraid of the dark? …these are a few of the things that come to mind when I think of darkness. How about you? Are there sayings, song lyrics, lines of poetry that stay with you when you think of darkness?

I’ll be adding the first line of this hymn to my darkness ‘quotable quotes’, because it is fab.u. lous. The image of ‘breaking the darkness’ immediately evokes daybreak and the break of dawn (and though I haven’t witnessed overly many daybreaks, I hear sunrise is glorious!). I can close my eyes and picture the dark, shattered by the inexorable, irresistible force of light, uncovering, revealing, illuminating. I imagine squinting against the sudden brightness, my skin soaking in the growing warmth.

And I can only begin to grasp what freedom there would be in light, if I had felt bound till the breaking by an endless night of dark. What that liberation must feel like, when the first hint of light glows on the horizon. It would be enough to send me to my knees in praise.

It was Anne Frank who said, “Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.”

Break the darkness, liberating Light, and not just for me…

...to not see

Teach me your way, O Lord, teach me your way!

your guiding grace afford, teach me your way!

Help me to walk aright, more by faith, less by sight;

lead me with heavenly light, teach me your way.

---B. Mansell Ramsey, 1919

More by faith, less by sight. Is there anything we humans like less than not seeing? Whether it is a fear of the dark, the panic of a blindfold, or the frustration of low vision or driving through a pounding rainstorm, not seeing can leave us feeling helpless, and hopeless. Yet in scripture we are instructed to ‘walk by faith and not by sight.’ Could anything take us out of our comfort zone faster?

How might our lives change if we walked less by sight and more by faith? Would our decision-making process change? What judgements might we forgo, or at least suspend?  Would we experience others’ needs and problems in a different light? Would our dependence on God make us weak…or would it make us strong?