For the Blind There Will Be No Growth

Is 55:10-11 / Rom 8:18-23 / Mt 13:1-13

A bright little fifth-grader was doing an experiment on a grasshopper for his science project. He put the grasshopper on a table, leaned down till his face was just inches away, and shouted, “Jump!” The grasshopper leapt into the air. Then the boy carefully removed one of the insect’s legs. “Jump!” he shouted. And the grasshopper jumped again. The boy repeated this process four more times, each time removing another leg. And each time, the grasshopper leapt into the air. Finally, the boy removed the grasshopper’s last leg and shouted, “Jump!” The grasshopper didn’t move. With that, our would-be scientist opened his journal and recorded his conclusions: “When all its legs are removed, a grasshopper becomes deaf.”

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Not very smart!

We’d all better get a whole lot smarter, if we ever hope to build the big lives God wants for us. To build a big life, it’s not enough just to point ourselves in some generally good direction and then switch on the cruise control. We have to choose specifically where we’re going. And to do that we have to see where we’ve been and what our having been there meant. Most of us don’t do that very well. When we tell our story, we get the outside part okay. For example, “I went to this college, practiced law for 40 years in that city, raised three kids, and then retired in 1989.” Fine, but what about the inside? What did we become on the inside in the course of all those years? Do we even know? Most of our friends could tell us!

Let me tell you some of the things I’ve never heard anyone say, even in the safety and anonymity of the confessional:

• “I’m manipulative and controlling, and I always get my way or else!” Never heard that.

• “I’m pessimistic and a whiner, and I sour life for everybody around me.” Never!

• “I have a huge ego, and I’m obsessed with winning, at work, on the freeway, in conversation…” Not once have I heard that one!

• “I’m a blamer. It’s always someone else’s fault.” Never heard it!

I’ve heard a lot about missed morning prayers, and stolen stuff large and small, and bad thoughts too, but very little about what we are at the core. I suspect that’s not because we’re hiding it but because we don’t know how to look that deep. We haven’t seen what most everyone around us sees, namely, the big, repeating patterns that tell us what we’re really about. And so, we never get to fix what’s broken in us, never get to celebrate what’s terrific in us, and never get to feed and nourish even half the gifts that God put in us, all because we don’t see what’s there at our core.

In Sunday’s gospel, Jesus is challenging us to grow up on the inside, to build big lives that yield joy 30-, 60-, 100-fold. That can happen and Jesus is promising to help. Our part in this is to see clearly what is at our core, to recognize that what’s there is our assignment from God, and to give our all to working with God till every space within us is alive, filled with light, filled with the Spirit!

For the spiritually blind there will be no growth, no light. But for those who are willing to see and to be led, there will be light, and life, and Spirit in abundance and unending. So may it be for us all!

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