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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
‘Lord, that I may receive my sight.’
Luk_18:41
I. We must know our condition.—The first thing of all is, to be aware that we are morally blind. And the next thing after we have discovered that is, to be quite sure that if we go to Him He will restore us, to be quite sure that if we ask Him, with the true desire to see, He will let us see. How is this to be done? People often say: How can these things be? One day comes after another, very much like the one before it, but what can I do? What step can I possibly take in order that I may reach Him, and receive my sight?
II. We must desire sight.—Do we really desire? That is the point. Do we really desire to see? Is it the object of our life to get our sight from Him, or are we contented, and think that in this darkness that is around us we see all that is to be seen?
III. We must make an effort.—Special opportunities come at different times when efforts can be made, perhaps better than at other times, towards recovering our sight. And I imagine that there is no season more fit than the approaching season of Lent for us to look into a matter like this. ‘Oh, yes,’ you say, ‘it comes every year, I know, terribly dull forty days—oh, terrible! It passes by and nothing comes of it.’ Nothing will ever come of it unless we make an effort. We shall be exactly where we are now, at Easter, unless we make an effort. The season of Lent may come, the notices may be given out in church; we may read day after day the different Lessons, Epistles and Gospels, but nothing will come of it, absolutely nothing, unless we make an effort. It is something that must come from within—that desire to see, that desire to know that we do not see all there is to be seen. There must be that desire from within, that effort to reach Him, that effort to see.
—
Rev. Sir B. Savory.
Illustration‘Here are the words of Milton on his blindness—
Seasons return, but not to me returns
The sight of vernal bloom, or summer rose,
But cloud instead, and everduring dark
Surround me; from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off; and for the book of knowledge fair,
Presented with a universal blank.
The following lines, written shortly before his death, show how fully he recognised the Divine purpose in his affliction—
On my bended knee
I recognise Thy purpose, clearly shown;
My vision Thou hast dimm’d that I may see
Thyself, Thyself alone.’