Hopelessness is an Optical Illusion!
When life gets blurry, God wants us to see through the obstacle of our illusions to the kingdom reality. One day, as Jesus and his disciple came upon a blind man, the disciples immediately saw an obstacle. They were captured by an illusion. They didn’t even ask or expect Jesus to do something for the man. They didn’t ask if there was any hope for this guy. They didn’t ask Jesus to heal him. All they said was, “Who could we blame?” They wrote the man off automatically. When you come upon a situation and the first thing you see is an obstacle that leads to a place of hopelessness, there’s nothing else to do but find someone or something to blame for it. Sadly, that is often the first response, even for Christians! However, it is not a kingdom response. It is an elusion.
Jesus does not allow the disciples to go there. In John 9:3 (NIV) Jesus says, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. In many ways an optical illusion is a lot like an elusion, because, when we are captured by what we see, we often end up avoiding the reality…trying to turn what we see into something it isn’t. An optical illusion is when what you see doesn’t equal what is real.
Now…a caveat here…I am not saying that the obstacles we face in life are not real. They are very real. Nor am I saying that the pain associated with those struggles in is not real. It is very real. However, as believers…as Christians, in the moment that we find ourselves in a place of hopelessness, where there is nothing to do but assign blame, we are actually dealing with an illusion. What God wants us to do is to see through it to His glory and provision. When things get fuzzy and life throws you an obstacle, we are called to push beyond the illusion of hopelessness, because Christians are a people of hope. If we don’t have hope, and there isn’t something a lot better than this, what is the point in believing at all?
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