I've often thought how difficult it would be to blind. It would be so painful to never see the smiles of my children, the beauty of a sunset, or the majesty of mountain peaks. And of course it would also be difficult to perform basic tasks --- transportation, work, play.

There are, of course, many kinds of blindness. We can be blind to the needs of others --- parents, children, spouses and friends. We can be blind to our own pain. We can be blind to the presence of God in the strangers we meet.

And we can be just as significantly impaired by these types of blindness as we can be by physical blindness. Relationships can be stifled by insensitivity to others, or by lack of awareness of how our own pain causes us to hurt others. Our spiritual happiness can be impaired by the inability to see God at work in our world.

In this week's Gospel reading from Cycle A (for the Second Scrutiny), Jesus restores the sight of a man born blind, and many of the people around him react with anger and dismay. We see all types of blindness in this story. Some cannot accept that God would reach out to a man deemed a "sinner" by the mores of the day. Others remain neutral, afraid of offending the cynical religious leaders, but also unwilling to embrace the reality they "see" before them. Only the man who is healed seems to see clearly, saying simply "I believe, Lord."

In today's first reading, Samuel is sent to the family of Jesse to anoint the new king of Israel. After viewing all the sons of Jesse, God chooses the smallest of them all, rejecting the stronger, older sons. "Not as man sees does God see," the Lord tells Samuel. "Because man sees the appearance, but the Lord looks into the heart."

Just as there are different types of blindness, so there are different types of sight. We tend to see what's on the surface, and to make assumptions about people and situations. We may think that well dressed people are more trustworthy than poorly dressed people. Or we may think that an illness, or a problem in a relationship, is a disaster.

God may see it differently. God sees into our hearts. Jesus said that the man was born blind "so that the works of God might be made visible through him." We don't always know how God is at work beneath what we see on the surface.

Lent is a time when we are challenged to acknowledge areas of blindness in our own lives --- the areas where we cannot see how we hurt ourselves and other people. We are also challenged to look for the work of God in people and situations where we might not expect it. Illness can lead to healing. Rejection can lead to acceptance. Crisis can turn into triumph.

Jesus says he is the light of the world. That is the ultimate good news of the Gospel and of Lent. There is a light that is greater than the darkness that seems to surround us sometimes, greater even than the darkness we create for ourselves. The light of the world can pierce even the most stubborn blindness.

Bill Peatman writes from Napa.