Spots Before His Eyes

Faith is intangable. You can’t see it, cut it with a knife, or analyze it. Faith is almost always a belief in the unseen. A feeling that only the faithful one can understand. Still, there are a few, a very choice few who receive faith in a way that they can verify. The Apostles were such people. Hoards of people saw Jesus talking to the crowds, and saw one, maybe two miracles, but the Apostles were with him every day for most of three years. They KNEW! Not long after the crucifixion another man came along. Paul. Paul was a man of faith, too. A devout Jew, a Pharisee, versed in the law and blindly obedient to the Torah. There wasn’t a single thing wrong with Paul.   For all outward appearances he was a Jew’s Jew! 

Paul only had one thing that tripped him up. It wasn’t a great revelation of faith it was an actual occurance that can be verified if you just know where to look. You all know the story of Paul’s experience on the Damascus Road. saw a vision of Christ so bright that it blinded him. Then he stumbled into town and a man was sent to heal him where he regained his sight; but did he? If you read between the lines, indeed just read the lines you can see a marvelous sign of faith in Paul’s letters over the next few years. He mentions how large he has to make his letters, and using others to actually write his letters, he only lending his signature to validate its credibility. In another he says the love he felt from the congregation was so great that he felt they would pluck their own eyes out and give it to him if they could. Luke was a doctor and accompanied Paul, “Only Luke is with me . . .” 

All of this leads to the fact that Paul had a sight problem. From my own personal life I can draw a parallel to this. When I was three and a half years old I contracted polio and encephalitis. Dead baby crawling! I was in the hospital in Shreveport when my mother left the room to pray and a mysterious nurse came in. She washed my face, told me I would be well tomorrow, and her name was “Margo.” Well, the every next day I went from bed-ridden to pushing my fourteen year old cousin up and down the hospital halls. As the years went by I remembered Margo and I never forgot the cure.  I never forgot because the cure was not complete. The brain fever brought on by my illness partially blinded me in my right eye. To this day I can close my left eye and the evidence of that time is still there. 

So it was with Paul. He was cured on Straight Street, but not totally. Jesus left a little for him to remember. Spots in his eyes that never went away. Through his entire life all Paul had to do to reinforce his faith in what he’d seen on that road so long ago was just look up and see the spots still dancing from the blinding light that shone on him that day. He followed those spots to Rome, and finally to martyrdom. When given the choice of denying what he had seen, or accepting death, all he had to do was look at the spots, and he had no doubt.