Ann Spangler - I Am with You

I long for God, not the works of God.

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA

Imagine never being able to distinguish music from noise. Every song, every symphony, every note would sound garbled and unpleasant. Youd struggle to stifle your laughter when you saw friends making fools of themselves belting out the words to their favorite songs or gyrating across the dance floor to a melody you couldnt detect. And what about all the money spent downloading music or the time wasted listening to a bunch of disagreeable sounds strung together? Wouldnt it all seem rather bizarre?

That was Austin Chapmans perspective for nearly twenty-three years. Born deaf, Austin was at peace with his situation. All music, he explains, sounded like trash through my hearing aids. But that changed the day he tried on a new pair capable of distributing higher frequencies with greater clarity.

Suddenly the young filmmaker heard sounds he didnt even know existed the scraping of his shoe on carpet, the clicking of a computer keyboard, the whir of a fan. That night, friends decided to give him a crash course on music. He listened in amazement to Mozart, Elvis, Michael Jackson, and more.

When Mozarts Lacrimosa came on, Chapman says, I was blown away by the beauty of it. At one point of the song, it sounded like angels singing and I suddenly realized that this was the first time I was able to appreciate music. Tears rolled down my face and I tried to hide it.... I finally understood the power of music.

Chapmans story reminds me of my first experience with God. Before that, most of what Id heard about him sounded garbled and boring, a bit like trash coming through hearing aids. These bits of knowledge didnt move me; instead, they left me feeling cold and a bit fearful. What little faith I had vanished shortly after I entered college. I did my best to make peace with my godless state as though it were completely natural, the only rational response to life.

But then God disarmed me. He surprised me by being real, by helping me see that the god I had rejected didnt even exist. In truth, I hadnt discarded God, but only a caricature formed by my own and others misperceptions. When the real God showed up, he changed my life. He upended my world. He blew my mind.

And he keeps doing it surprising me, catching me off guard, shattering my false images of him. And that is true for most of us as we live out the Christian life. In our sanest moments, we realize that the most important thing we can do is to pursue God; to hound him, even; to prayerfully insist that he give us a clearer revelation of who he is, because by doing so, we are fulfilling the purpose for which he made us. It is in his presence that life and joy are to be found. All other things, the things that clamor for our worship and insist on our undivided attention, are revealed for what they are beautiful trifles, which when compared to God seem merely like tinfoil reflections of his glory.

The Old Testament prophets knew about our susceptibility to idols and to phony worship. Over and over they railed against idolatry, linking it to blindness. Listen to Isaiah describing those who worship idols:

Such stupidity and ignorance!

Their eyes are closed, and they cannot see.

Their minds are shut, and they cannot think.

The person who made the idol never stops to reflect,

Why, its just a block of wood!

I burned half of it for heat

and used it to bake my bread and roast my meat.

How can the rest of it be a god?

Should I bow down to worship a piece of wood?

The poor, deluded fool feeds on ashes.

He trusts something that cant help him at all.

Yet he cannot bring himself to ask,

Is this idol that Im holding in my hand a lie?

I SAIAH 44:18-20

Indeed, throughout Scripture, we see this link between Gods judgment and the dulling of our human senses. Jesus, the one famous for opening the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf, makes this link crystal clear:

I entered this world to render judgment to give sight to the blind and to show those who think they see that they are blind.

Some Pharisees who were standing nearby heard him and asked, Are you saying were blind?

If you were blind, you wouldnt be guilty, Jesus replied. But you remain guilty because you claim you can see.

J OHN 9:39-41

If we want to see God more clearly, we have to be willing to let go of false images when we are given the grace to recognize them for what they are. Human vision, of course, is always impaired. Our deluded hearts mislead us. We see only to the extent that God graciously opens our eyes the eyes of the blind.

Not long ago, while I was puzzling over the difficulties that bear down hard upon our lives things like job loss, illness, financial pressure, relational conflict, and other maladies, it occurred to me that the emotional pain we feel as a result of our troubles is often magnified by a colossal misunderstanding one common to the human race. This misunderstanding arises from our lack of vision. Most of the time, we dont clearly see ourselves or our circumstances or the God we love. As Paul says, we are always looking through a glass, darkly (1 Corinthians 13:12, KJV ). So our vision is to some extent blurred, limited, and confused, putting us into the foreground while everything else recedes to the background. Our fears, our aspirations, our troubles these are the focal points that command our attention.