Blindness

In a remarkable story of perseverance and hope, a 47-year-old mother of five from Cookeville, Tennessee, has graduated from Tennessee Tech University after losing her sight in 2020. Despite the challenge of blindness, Amanda Juetten graduated magna cum laude, refusing to let her condition define her or limit her aspirations. “I want people to know that blindness doesn’t have to stop you from pursuing your dreams,” said Juetten.

Throughout her studies, she relied on assistive technology, the support of her family, and her own determination to overcome obstacles. “There were days when I felt overwhelmed, but I kept telling myself, ‘You can do this,’” she said. One professor remarked, “Her dedication to her education and her family is truly extraordinary.” Another classmate added, “She’s shown all of us what’s possible when you refuse to give up, no matter the circumstances.”

Now a proud graduate, Juetten plans to use her degree to advocate for the blind community and help others facing similar challenges. “I want to be a voice for those who feel unseen,” she explained. Her story is a testament to the power of determination and the importance of never losing sight of one’s dreams, even in the face of overwhelming odds.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Even when we refuse to let our limitations define us, we are called to trust that God’s purpose for our lives remains—He can use our greatest challenges as platforms for His glory.

Have you ever heard about "The Ant Death Spiral"? A fascinating NPR article describes this phenomenon. A particular species of army ant is utterly blind, so they get about by sniffing trails left by the ants in front of them. They, in turn, leave chemical trails of their own.

But, as the article notes, "the system works smoothly when everybody's going in a straight line in one direction. But when the lead ants start to loop, bad things can happen …. If the ant-in-front loops and intersects with its old trail, the whole crowd then turns in on itself and everybody gets caught in the endless circle." Another researcher wrote, “this circle is commonly known as a ‘death spiral’ because the ants might eventually die of exhaustion. It has been reproduced in laboratories and in ant colony simulations.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Theodore C. Schneirla, the scientist who first observed this behavior, was quick to point out "that ants get stuck in ways that we humans never do." I'm not so sure Schneirla is right about that.

As a young adult, writer Andrew Leland was diagnosed with a rare disorder that caused him to become blind. In a New Yorker article, he notes that throughout history people have either bullied or coddled visually impaired people. But he gives an example of one school that empowers the blind by challenging them to achieve new heights of independence. Leland writes:

In 2020, I heard about a residential training school called the Colorado Center for the Blind, in Littleton. The C.C.B. is part of the National Federation of the Blind and is staffed almost entirely by blind people. Students live there for several months, wearing eye-covering shades and learning to navigate the world without sight. The N.F.B. takes a radical approach to cultivating blind independence. Students use power saws in a woodshop, take white-water-rafting trips, and go skiing. To graduate, they have to produce professional documents and cook a meal for sixty people.

The most notorious test is the “independent drop”: a student is driven in circles, and then dropped off at a mystery location in Denver, without a smartphone. (Sometimes, advanced students are left in the middle of a park, or the upper level of a parking garage.) Then the student has to find her way back to the Colorado Center, and she is allowed to ask one person one question along the way. A member of an R.P. support group told me, “People come back from those programs loaded for bear”—ready to hunt the big game of blindness. Katie Carmack, a social worker with R.P., told me, of her time there, “It was an epiphany.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

In the same way, our heavenly Father will stretch us by “dropping” us into challenging situations.

Top athletes around the region convened in early February for the Cascade Classic, the Northwest Goalball Regional Tournament. If you’ve never seen the sport of goalball in action, you’re not alone. Most of its participants haven’t seen it, either. The Cascade Classic is held at the Washington State School for the Blind.

Eliana Mason, a two-time Paralympic goalball medalist said, “We always say goalball is the coolest sport you’ve never heard of. It’s for blind athletes, but you really have to see it for it to make sense.”

Goalball was invented by occupational therapists working with World War II vets who’d lost their sight in the war. It’s three-on-three, played on a volleyball-sized court, and the object is to roll a basketball-sized ball into an opponent’s goal. And everything about the experience is tailored to the needs of visually impaired people.

All participants wear black-out goggles, so everyone is equally sightless. The lines on the court are raised, making it possible for players to orient themselves. The ball itself has bells inside of it, so players can hear it as it moves around. And spectators are asked to maintain silence, to assist the players in their auditory navigation.

Tournament director Jen Armbruster said, “Instead of hand-eye coordination, it’s hand-ear coordination. Ambruster founded the tournament in 2010 at Portland State University. She said, “My big thing is just getting folks involved in physical activity, competitive or recreation. A lot of times, especially on the visually impaired and blind side, so many of them get pulled out of P.E. They don’t know the adaptations that are out there.”

Mason tried goalball and was never the same. “Jen took us to Florida for a youth tournament, and I fell in love with the sport after I got to compete and just be in the community. For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel like I had to compensate or work through a barrier. I could just be me.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

1) God is pleased when we make accommodations to include all the body of Christ in our activities. “We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. (Rom. 15:1); 2) We should all become experts at being silent and listening to hear God’s voice.

Writer/historian John Dickson writes about a social media post that annoyed his atheist friends. It was a portion of a 1929 interview of Albert Einstein by journalist George Viereck. What annoyed them was Einstein’s admiration for a historical figure found in the New Testament Gospels.

Veireck: To what extent are you influenced by Christianity?

Einstein: As a child, I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene.

Veireck: You accept the historical existence of Jesus?

Einstein: Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life. How different, for instance, is the impression which we receive from an account of legendary heroes of antiquity like Thesus. Thesus and other heroes of his type lack the authentic vitality of Jesus.

Dickson writes,

I literally had folks suggesting Veireck’s interview itself was a fraud, even though – as I pointed out – it was published in one of 20th-century America’s most widely read magazines. I had to dig it out of the archives and post screenshots of the relevant pages of the interview before some would believe that Einstein said such a thing … Such is the power of preference to shape what we believe!

One of the most prolific songwriters in the history of Christianity has been Fanny Crosby, who wrote over 9,000 spiritual songs. Crosby was blinded in both eyes at six weeks of age through a medical error. However, she could still visualize the beauty of Christ's blessings, often with more clarity than those who had sight. As a result, it has been noted that in many of her hymns, this visually impaired lady quite amazingly spoke about sight, as seen in the following examples.

“Visions of rapture now burst on my sight” (Blessed Assurance)

“Watching and waiting, looking above” (Blessed Assurance)

“Near the cross I'll watch and wait, hoping, trusting ever” (In the Cross)

“But purer and higher and greater will be, our wonder, our transport, when Jesus we see.” (To God be the Glory)

Possible Preaching Angle: Even as we receive spiritual insight through the lyrics of a lady with no vision, may we too, get a new vision of the glories of Christ! "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith ..." (Hebrews 12:2)

A 67-year-old woman scheduled for routine cataract surgery thought it was just dry eye and old age causing her discomfort. But the real cause of her discomfort was much more concerning: 27 contact lenses, stuck in the woman's right eye in a "blue mass."

Rupal Morjaria, a specialist trainee in ophthalmology, said the woman hadn't complained about any visual trouble before the operation. But when the anesthetist at the hospital started to numb her eye for surgery, he found the first cluster of contacts. Morjaria said, "He put a speculum into the eye to hold the eye open as he put the anesthetic in, and he noticed a blue mass under the top eyelid."

Eventually they found a mass of 27 lenses. "We were all shocked," Morjaria said. "We've never come across this." A representative from the American Academy of Ophthalmology said he's seen patients have one lens stuck, but never 27. "This is one for the record books, as far as I could tell," he said.

The woman had been wearing monthly disposable contact lenses for 35 years, but it's unclear how long they had been gathering in her eye. Sometimes when she would try to remove a contact from that eye, she couldn't find it. The patient had just figured she'd dropped it somewhere, Morjaria explained, but it was actually getting stuck in her eye with the others.

Possible Preaching Angles: Miracles; Jesus; God, power of; Gospel—Instead of going to the doctor and seeing the person that could fix her blurred vision, she just tried harder. She kept adding something else, thinking that it must be the problem. What this woman didn't need was something else added to her life- She needed it removed.

When Pierre-Paul Thomas was growing up in Montreal, Canada in the 1940s he couldn't play hockey with his brothers and it broke his heart. Thomas was born blind—long before a cure was available. So for most of his life he could only imagine the world that people often described to him. For years he walked with a white cane to avoid obstacles in front of him. But at the age of sixty-six, Thomas fell down the stairs in an apartment building and fractured the bones of his face. He was rushed to the hospital with severe swelling around his eyes. A team of doctors went to work to repair the bones. Months later he went to be examined by a plastic surgeon for a consultation about repairing his scalp.

The surgeon casually asked Thomas, "Oh, while we're at it, do you want us to fix your eyes too?" Thomas did not understand. Nor did he know how to respond. Not long after that, Thomas had surgery and could truly see for the first time.

Suddenly his world consisted of bright colors he had never fathomed before. He spoke of being awestruck by flowers blossoming and trees blooming. As beautiful as this story of a sixty-year-old man who was able to see for the first time is, there is a sad reality. He could have had the same surgery at a younger age and been able to see earlier. Thomas had assumed such a possibility was impossible and had resigned himself to a life of blindness when, in reality, he could have experienced the gift of sight decades earlier.

At the age of 45, Michael May miraculously regained his sight. May was blinded at age three, and lived 42 years of his life without sight. Then, in 1999, he was given the possibility to see again through what was at that time a revolutionary transplant surgery.

Prior to May's surgery, there were only about forty cases of sight restored to patients who had been either born blind or who had been blind for most of their life. Most of these patients followed a similar pattern. At first, they experienced euphoria as light rushed into their repaired eyes. They saw color and motion immediately. Everything was new and exciting. It was a miracle.

But then frustration set in. Learning to live with sight involved a huge learning curve. Most of the newly-sighted people still couldn't perceive height, distance, depth, or three-dimensional shapes. They couldn't read facial expressions and detect gender. Nor could they distinguish important information from the trivial. At times, the newly-sighted patients felt that they belonged neither to the world of those who see nor the world of those who can't see. Family members, who had expected immediate change, were often crushed by the slow transformation.

But Michael May's case was different. When the doctors finally removed the surgical bandages from his eyes, just like the other patients he couldn't perceive space or see height, distance, depth, or three-dimensional shapes. The moon looked like a big streetlamp. He couldn't read people's faces. But unlike the other patients, May didn't get discouraged by the long learning curve. Instead, he approached his new world with an attitude of adventure and childlike wonder.

May knew that learning to see again would involve not just one magical operation, but a lifelong quest to learn, grow, take risks, and change. Even as he left the hospital, May peppered his wife with questions: "What's this? What's that? Is that a step? Is that a flower? That's a painting? Let me feel it. Can I touch that plant? Let me touch a car." He rode elevators over and over again for the sheer pleasure of finding the hotel lobby after the ride. He played catch with his son, horribly missing many balls before he finally got the hang of it.

May continued to struggle with his transition to the reality of sight. His world often looked like a huge abstract painting. High-speed events, such as the passing of cars and bicycles, became frightening. Things often looked very close—frighteningly close. Previous patients had felt discouraged or even depressed by this long, slow transformation to the new reality of sight. But May told himself that this was part of the adventure, that the leap forward wasn't really a leap at all if everything felt safe. As a result, every day and even every failure seemed like a new opportunity for May to learn, grow, and change.

Possible preaching angles: (1) When we come to Christ, he restores our spiritual vision. But just like the man in this story had to learn to see through a long process, Christians are on a lifelong journey called sanctification. We can approach this process of transformation with discouragement or with adventure and wonder. (2) Just as the man in this story had to learn to distinguish or discern reality with his new sight, followers of Christ must enter a lifelong process of learning to discern good and evil, obedience and disobedience.

As the recent winter approached, USA Today writer Larry Copeland wrote a story about the danger of "peephole" driving. Anyone who lives in the frozen north has likely been a peephole driver at some point. You're in a hurry to get to work on time, and when you walk out into the cold you find that your car is encased in a layer of snow and ice from an overnight storm. You start the car and turn up the heater. You get out your scraper and battle to chip out a clear space on your windshield. After a few minutes you have cleared away an opening the size of a large pepperoni pizza. You are now shivering and miserable, and you realize this will take 10 more minutes. So you move to the rear window and scrape off a narrower opening the size of a small sausage pizza with extra olives and do the same with the side windows. You throw caution to the frigid winds and get in the car and drive away.

Then it hits you: you can hardly see. You drive really slow and lean up close to the windshield and peer out your peephole and hope against hope that you don't run into anyone before the heater and defrosters melt more of the ice away from your windows. Worse yet, as you peer out your peephole, you notice that other drivers are peering out their peepholes!

Copeland's article ends with this warning from the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles: "Peephole driving is an invitation to disaster."

Peephole driving is an apt picture of what it's like to go through life with the limited vision that comes from limited understanding and wisdom—the kind of limitations that come from not knowing the Scriptures.

Dogs do some things better than humans. For one thing, most dogs have a far better sense of smell than we do, and there is a physical reason for that. The sinuses of humans have about 6 million receptor cells that can sense the chemical odors afloat in the air. By contrast, the average beagle has more than 300 million receptor cells in its snout—that's 50 times more cells for smells. The dominant sense through which most humans perceive their world is their eyesight, but the dominant sense through which dogs perceive their world is through their nose. A human can walk down the sidewalk and perhaps perceive a faint aroma of flowers upwind a few feet ahead. A dog walking the same sidewalk perceives as well the traces of every dog or animal that has been in the area.

Just as dogs and humans have different levels of ability to perceive smells, people have differences in their ability to perceive other things. Some people hear much better than others. Some people have greater ability to perceive emotions in others. Some have greater ability intellectually to perceive ideas as they read.

Most important of all, some people have greater ability to perceive things spiritually and morally because they have devoted themselves to prayer and to learning from the Bible and applying it to their lives and their world. Others have greater spiritual discernment because of the spiritual gifts and callings that God has placed on them. For many reasons, all people do not have the same ability to perceive.

Dr. Katrina Firlik was the first woman admitted into the neurosurgery residency at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Her recent book, Another Day in the Frontal Lobe, provides a glimpse into the training of a brain surgeon. In one chapter she shares a story from the last year of her residency—a time when she was already becoming jaded to the tragedies of neurological devastation:

I walked into yet another examining room … a brand-new consult from out of town: 18-years-old, cerebral palsy, spasticity. Okay, okay, I've seen this before, I just need to get a good history before my attending walks in. Efficiency is key. I looked at the patient for a second: very skinny, special wheelchair, arms contracted, head support in place, mouth hung open. It was clear I wasn't going to get the story from him, so I turned to the parents, my back toward the patient, and started to take down the history. …

[When my mentor walked in], I cringed. … He sat down on the examining table, the only seat left in the cramped room. After introducing himself, he surveyed the compact scene—the patient, the parents—and then focused his gaze back on the patient. After what seemed like several, almost uncomfortably quiet seconds, he looked the patient in the eye and asked, "So, when did you graduate from high school?" The young man's face lit up like I had no idea it could.

My mentor had noticed something I had missed. The patient was wearing a large high-school ring, so large that it looked a little silly on his bony finger. His body, far more than his mind, had borne the brunt of his cerebral palsy. He was a proud, beaming high-school graduate, who used a specialized computer to help him communicate. For the remainder of the visit I sat in the corner, duncelike, humbled by the enormity of this ring now staring me in the face.

We make snap judgments everyday. Many are innocuous, dealing with the routines of life. But God is always speaking, especially in our everyday routines. When we pre-judge another person and assume we know their story, choosing not to listen to their verbal and non-verbal communication, we make the saddest mistake of all. It's so easy to view people as a statistic and not as a person for whom Christ died.

Imagine eating at a restaurant devoid of light. Hard as it is to believe, some people are choosing to dine that way. Following a growing trend, sightless restaurants are opening up across Europe. What is a sightless restaurant? John Bohannon experienced it firsthand. Bohannon plunged into the "inky blackness of Unsicht-Bar, a restaurant named for the German word for invisible." To get to his table, it was necessary to place his hand on the shoulder of Magid the waiter, then allow his dining partner to put her hand on his shoulder. In single file, they carefully maneuvered to their chairs, with the waiter as their guide. Magid needed no light. Like most waiters in these restaurants, he is blind.

Bohannon felt panicked by the utter darkness and the inability to see his own hand while waving it in front of his face. He heard a glass crash to the floor from a nearby table. The reaction was "more desperate than the situation would merit under normal (well-lit) circumstances."

Since no lights of any kind are allowed in the dining room, a staff member must lead patrons to a candlelit bathroom when the need arises. Bohannon's unease over the situation began to build to the point where he wanted someone to lead him to the bathroom, just so he could see something again. He pushed aside the nervousness when Magid arrived with the food and Bohannon soon discovered the difficulties of using a fork you can't see.

At the end of this unique dining experience, the waiter arrived to lead Bohannon and his guest back out of the restaurant and into the light.

Whatever the pluses or minuses of sightless dining, one thing is clear. When choosing darkness over light, your best guide is blind.

Inspirational speaker and writer Barbara Johnson tells this story:

The day had not started out well for a certain woman. She had overslept and was late for work. Then some things happened at the office that only contributed to her harried condition. By the time she reached the bus stop for her trip home, her stomach was tied in an intricate knot. As usual, the bus was late and packed, and she had to stand up. The bus started, stopped, turned left, then right, pushing and pulling her in all directions. The day wasn't improving even as it came to an end.

Then she heard a man's voice up front proclaim, "Beautiful day, isn't it?"

Because of the crowd she couldn't see the man, but he continued to comment on everything the bus passed that added to his joy: a church here, an ice cream store there, a baseball diamond here, a library there. The atmosphere in the bus grew immediately more carefree as did the woman's heart. The man's enthusiasm was so winsome, the woman found herself smiling. When the bus reached the woman's stop, she worked her way through the crowd to the door. As she did so, she glanced at the "tour guide;a plump man, wearing dark glasses, and carrying a white cane. He was blind.

As she stepped off the bus, she realized the day's tensions had disappeared. God had sent a blind man to help her see that, though things go wrong sometimes, it's still a beautiful world.

Every animal on earth has a set of correspondences with the environment around it, and some of those correspondences far exceed ours. Humans can perceive only thirty percent of the range of the sun's light and 1/70th of the spectrum of electromagnetic energy. Many animals exceed our abilities. Bats detect insects by sonar; pigeons navigate by magnetic fields; bloodhounds perceive a world of smell unavailable to us.

Perhaps the spiritual or "unseen" world requires an inbuilt set of correspondences activated only through some sort of spiritual quickening. "No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above," said Jesus. "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned," said Paul. Both expressions point to a different level of correspondence available only to a person spiritually alive.

Many years ago a little girl was totally blind. She was blinded as an infant as the result of an accident. She lived to be over 90 years old. She became a saint of the American church. She wrote many popular Christian songs and choruses. Her name was Fanny Crosby. When she was only eight years old, she wrote:

Oh, what a happy child I am, although I cannot see.

I am resolved that in this world, contented I will be.

How many blessings I enjoy that other people don't.

To weep and sigh because I'm blind--I cannot and I won't.

On a recent ski trip, I saw to my surprise a blind person skiing. The blind skier, wearing a bright pink vest, stayed directly behind an instructor, listening for directions on how and when to turn. Over the next several days I saw many blind skiers, invariably following the person who gave them the information they needed to make it safely down the mountain. Remaining, or abiding, in Jesus means following him in the same way.

For years the Bible was a dead book to me ... like grits without salt. But after I gave my life to Jesus Christ, it became alive. I saw that the Bible was God's way of talking to me.