There’s a girl that comes into my work a lot, she started at CSU this year, but she’s always lived in Fort Collins.  Over the summer we had pancakes at IHOP and talked for and hour or two about life and everything else.  I loved getting to know her, she’s a cool person.  It’s fun taking the opportunity to just get to know someone with no guilt and no strings attached, as a single amongst happy couples without that ability.  Not that they would be jealous.  Not that I have no jealousy for them!  Her and I talked about a lot of things, but the one thing that made her different from anyone  else I’ve ever known is that she’s the daughter of two blind parents.  They both play organ at the Baptist church they all go to.  They’ve been blind all their lives, but have two or three children with fully functional vision.  I forget to thank God for my eyes.  I bet these children don’t forget to thank God for their eyes.  The oldest, whom I had pancakes with, has taken care of her parents her whole life.  This makes her interesting in a number of ways as a caregiver of sorts to them and as the only one in the family who drives, and the only one who uses a computer or reads the newspaper or watches TV.

This isn’t about her though, although I’d love to write about her more.  Her parents are the ones that fascinate me.  I can’t imagine what a story they have, not understanding the concept of color or light or geometry.  Do they see pictures in their minds?  How do they visualize objects when they’re brought up in conversation?  Do you think they connect the idea of a car instead with the noise it makes as it starts up, or passes on the street?  Is a toaster the sound it makes when bread pops out?  I mean lots of objects feel square, what distinguishes a toaster from other square things?  Here’s another crazy thought, how do you visualize your kids?  Each other?  We imagine what people look like when we think of them.  If you’ve never seen a person, what do you think when you think of them?

How did these people meet?  I bet it wasn’t anything like the way we like to meet people.  If you only know the sound of a person’s voice, and your first impressions of them are the way they talk to you first when they meet you, especially as a blind person, you look right away into their hearts instead of just at their skin.  What a healthy way to see people, what a tragically foreign concept.  If you’re blind and in love, you don’t grow fond of a face, a body.  You grow fond of the way they speak to you, the way a caring hand guides you through a world of shapes instead of colors.  The way a person looks doesn’t really exemplify the character or heart they have anyway, words do that.  You grow close to what your other senses gather about the person.  What a strange situation it must have been when they met!  Certainly they had one very specific thing in common, I’m sure they went from there.  I don’t know anything about these, people, so really I’m just speculating.  I’ve helped the woman order her food at my restaurant, and I’ve never met the husband either, but I’m about to infer something about them.

Here’s a thought.  If two blind people fall in love, having never seen each other, what is their relationship based on?  Certainly not that they both though each other was attractive, it must have been each other’s inner beauty, if I may use such a cliche.  They fall in love with, and are motivated by, each other’s heart.  Two blind people would be unaware, or at least unconcerned with each other’s fading beauty, so as they grow old, they only grow more beautiful to each other because the thing they love, the heart, gets more beautiful and more lovely with age.  I think that makes sense, or ideally it does.  Imagine, if put into our situation as people blessed with eyes, that we saw the person we loved get more and more beautiful physically as they grew old, and they saw us the same.  How wonderful, we only become more attractive to each other!  We need to care more, obviously, about the heart than the outward appearance.  A lot of people do care more about that.  I need to care more about that.  Not that it’s bad that we find each other beautiful.  In fact, I wish these parents could see what a lovely daughter they have!  He took a great deal of time fashioning our faces and frames, and we do no wrong appreciating his work.  But oh how we objectify the person for their form and face!

It is precious here to note that God is nothing like us.  ”Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart,” says 1 Samuel 16:7.  This means that God sees us sort of like blind couples might see each other.  He is less concerned with our hair and our eyes and our fitness, because the person He loves is the person He put inside our soul, to one day be released from this prison of a body that we hang clothes on, adorn with makeup, and for some strange reason, worship.  Instead of this confused, materialistic “love” that only deteriorates, we are seen instead to be more and more beautiful to Him because as we grow, God sees us more and more lovely all the time.  THAT is the God we serve!  That is a little glimpse of His character.  Our God is concerned with our hearts, not the body He placed us in to provide what ever set of challenges and trials we needed to grow through.  Moreover, that thing He does see, our spirit, He sees as PERFECT when we claim the precious blood of Jesus as payment for the sin we’ve separated ourselves from him by.  We are seen as perfect and spotless.  Because of the complete, redeeming work of Jesus, nothing can separate us now from the love of God.  BECAUSE God looks at the heart instead of outward appearances.

Why don’t I look at people that way?  I’m jealous for the love of these two blind people, although I thank God now for my eyes.  I’m jealous for their perspective and I hope I can learn from it.  I pray that family is doing well and that God lives among them.  Thank you God for your character that I don’t understand.