"Who is blind but my servant, and deaf like the messenger I send? Who is blind like the one committed to me, blind like the servant of the Lord?"

Isaiah 42: 16 & 19

The "real world" flashes before me in all of its deceit. I see so much. What is it that drives its anxieties into our heads like brain surgery, a mad surgeon content on one thing: hopeless confusion.

And here is what passes within us to "be what we were suspossed to be," here is all that we think we are, concluding into one passive passion, one not fully conscious, one filled with the stuff of everydayness; here is what the great Jewish philosopher Martin Buber called the It-world.

And when it passes before us we have a hard time distinguishing it from the You-world; the world of encounter; the world of true persons encountering each other. I will not say that this is the only place of reality because the It-world is a part of our lives, but let us not confuse one for the other.

The modern machine has become our friend, not our tool. This is confusion. This is the place where true persons become a mass of resource; souls become shovels to break up the ground for no seed, but for more mechinization, seeds require waiting.

And who will be blind enough to see? And who will listen like the deaf? In one of Jesus's parables, these were called in for the Great Banquet because those originally invited had things to take care of, houses to attend to, payments to be payed for, the "real world" to look after. So the lame, the crippled, the blind were called (Luke 14).

There is a world that tempts me to brush over the invitation with a wave of my hand and hurry off away from the "fanatics." It is a world I must enter into, but how will I be lame enough, desperate enough to blindly accept this invitation when it comes to me on my way to such important meetings, such busy details, such crucial worries? Will I fail enough to be lying on the street, begging for food when it comes? Will I fail this world? Will I be hungry when it comes?

May hunger, may lameness, may blindness, may crippledness, may desperation truely be my yes.

It is in the arms of Abba where we can truely know our condition. For the love of Jesus is what brings healing to our wounds. May we not forget where the Lord found us, and where we wait eagerly for the glory we hope for.