Blind Spots

Blind Spots

(“Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low.” Luke 3:4-5)

Way back in 1973 I was in my first major car crash. Only 18, I was driving home from my job at a pharmacy in Lafayette, Ca, to Concord. I was on the freeway and approached the split that veering left would take me home or to the right, take me further south. In those days I drove a blue Volkswagen van with tie-dye curtains. I had not merged into the left lane soon enough.

Driving in the second lane from the right, I needed to make my way one more lane to the left. I glanced in my truck-style sideview mirrors, then my rearview mirror and once more to the left one. I saw no cars. I had already set my blinker and began to merge into the next lane.

Suddenly I heard the angry honk of a car almost immediately to my left. I quickly turned the steering wheel to the right, applied the brakes a bit, and went into an out of control fishtail. I was now beyond the median that began to separate the two freeways.

At around 50 mph my right tires hit the median, and though it was no more than six inches high at this point, my van flipped to its side and skid across two lanes of traffic stopping on the right-hand shoulder.

Inside the van I was scared to death, and the whole thing seemed to happen in slow motion. A coffee mug lost its attachment to gravity and cracked into my forehead. Pencils, papers and a couple of books were suspended around me for what couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. Besides a scratch to my head, I was unhurt. I did call a friend to take me to the hospital and got to wear a lovely foam collar for a few weeks. Things could have been much worse. As the van skid across two lanes of traffic it was also leaking gasoline. The frame metal was sparking like the Fourth of July. I was extremely fortunate to escape a conflagration.

John the Baptist is telling people to “Prepare the way of the Lord.” He doesn’t specifically mention blind spots, but I think the image may be useful when we think about our own heart preparation.

He speaks of two things that should happen (among others): every valley should be filled, and every mountain should be made low. I think there may be blind spots associated with those who feel like their life is in the lowlands, and other blind spots for those who think they live on the mountain.

The valleys need to be “filled”. I think the valleys can refer to any disparaging thought about ourselves that keeps us from receiving the Lord’s best into our lives. Imagine someone who has constantly been told that they will never measure up, or they don’t have enough talent to pursue a dream. Or even worse, that God will punish them if the do not change. (So, they try with all their might to change, find they cannot, and determine they are outside of God’s blessing.)

I am reading a biography of the American First Ladies. Do you know that two of them lost children; one in a railroad accident where she saw a piece of metal take off the back of her beloved son’s head. For the rest of her life she believed God was punishing her because she had not been a good enough mother to that son!

She was a valley that needed to be “filled”. But imagine someone coming to her and saying, “I’ve lost a child too. You’ve just got to buck up, get on with your life. Stop complaining. I never complained.” Or, even worse, someone who has lost two children tells her the same thing. Think about it. Will these comments “fill” her valley? No, they dig it only deeper.

This person will now believe that, not only is God punishing her, but that she doesn’t even have the inner resolve to make life better. Those in the valley need to be filled, not given an earful. People are in valleys for may reasons. Mental illness can contribute to it, so can addiction, and of course, indulgent sin. But the answer for the one in the valley is filling.

Their blind spot is the inability to see God’s grace and mercy that are just up the road for them. If you are in a valley, please trust God wants to fill you with His grace. Examine the gospels and see how Jesus treated everyone who found themselves in the low places of life.

The other blind spot is just as prevalent and maybe harder to self-assess. When we are the mountain that needs to be made low, we usually feel like we are doing just fine in life. We may be a successful businessperson. A doctor with a burgeoning practice. A politician who is winning. We may even be and average man or woman, but we are pleased that we have kept all the rules that we think are important.

Nationalism is such a mountain. So is a strict reading of certain Bible passages that attempt to make other people submit to them. If it is “Israel first”, we have excluded 99 percent of the world’s population. If it is “America first”, the blind spot is just the same. And, when you are on the mountain, you have little empathy for anyone who, for whatever reason, is still down there in the valley slipping upon mountain trails.

Mountain people are the ones who lecture valley people about how to get out of the valley. Mountain people do not venture down, they wait for others through sheer effort, to make their way up the rugged slopes.

But that is not God’s solution. His solution, in preparing our way for the Lord, is that the mountain must come down! It’s as if He is saying, “If you won’t come down off your high righteous peak, then I’ll have to bring you and the mountain down to everyone else’s level.”

What is your blind spot today? Do you think you do not deserve anything from God? Well, you are wrong. You deserve love from the very One who created you. And you don’t earn it, you already have it because of God’s nature. That is why Jesus came; to show us the nature of Father God. Let Him fill up the low place, breathe again, and step into life.

Are you on the mountain? Have you lived surrounded by a Christian mindset for so long that you can no longer identify with people who struggle? Then hightail it off that mountain as quickly as you can! Sit with the mentally ill. Love the outcast. Welcome the immigrant and stranger.  Comfort the transsexual who struggles to know their way in life. Stop playing it safe.

Once valleys are lifted and mountains are torn down, that puts us all on the same level, doesn’t it? And guess what, that is exactly what God intended.