Can You See Without Eyes?
Daniel Kish can be found riding his bike all across town. While he is buzzing down the road, you'll hear him click. The remarkable thing about David Kish is that he is blind. Yes, he is a blind man riding a bike by himself. He has developed this skill called ‘Echo Location,’ a technique that helps blind people 'see' the world around them through the reverberations the clicks make and the distance they travel toward objects. Daniel has even started a has started a non-profit, World Access For The Blind, with the slogan "We see through noise.”
Daniel’s story is amazing and teaches us a very vital lesson. He developed this technique because he never wanted to be treated as a blind ‘charity-case.’ He wanted to be an independent, normal person who could do things for himself and contribute to the world around him. Kish expected to have a life like those who can see, and so did his mother. So she treated him like any other seeing child, constantly aware that he could get hurt, but allowing him to figure out a way beyond this ailment the world sees as a permanent disability. For Daniel, seeing happens through noise, but he sees nonetheless.
Expectation can be life giving or absolutely devastating. Having a positive expectation of something doesn't mean that it will happen exactly as you think, but this positivity often empowers you to move beyond the limits of what you currently see. We have become so conditioned by the ways of the world, what is expected and seen as normal, that we often miss the upside-down nature of the kingdom of God. We move through our lives without even thinking, acting according to its expectation of us. As I learned about David's story recently, it made me wonder what could be possible when I stop focusing on my blindness, allowing for new thinking to make me see myself and the world in a different way.
May we see anew as we read in Romans 12: 1-2 (MSG):
“So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life – and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you."