Blinded by the Light

Isaiah 59:9–19; Acts 9:1–20

Saul of Tarsus is breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord when the light hits him. It does not come gently. It knocks him to the ground. A voice speaks: Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? When he opens his eyes, he cannot see. The great persecutor, the man of absolute certainty, is led by the hand into Damascus like a child.

Three days of blindness. Three days of darkness. Three days that mirror another three days to come—in a tomb, between death and resurrection. Saul’s conversion is not a gentle turning but a death. The old Saul—zealous, violent, sure of himself—must die before Paul can be born.

"The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it." —Flannery O’Connor, letter to Betty Hester

Isaiah’s lament provides the backdrop: We wait for light, and lo! there is darkness; and for brightness, but we walk in gloom. We grope like the blind along a wall, groping like those who have no eyes. The prophet describes a world that has lost its way—not because the light has gone out but because the people have turned away from it. Their iniquities have been barriers between you and your God.

Saul’s blindness is strange because he was already blind—blind to the truth about Jesus, blind to his own violence, blind to the suffering he was causing. The physical blindness on the Damascus road was mercy. It forced him to stop. It made his inner condition visible. Sometimes we must lose our sight to gain our vision.

Then comes Ananias—perhaps the bravest minor character in the New Testament. God tells him to go to Saul, the very man who has come to arrest people like Ananias. Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem. God’s answer is simple: Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen. Ananias goes. He lays hands on the enemy. He calls him Brother.

Abba Sisoes, when asked what he should do about the passions that troubled him, replied: Let the passions enter. As they enter, fight them. The spiritual life does not exempt us from crisis. It does not promise a smooth path. It promises that the light, even when it blinds us, is leading us somewhere. Even the three days of darkness are part of the journey.

Today, if you feel struck down—by failure, by change, by a truth you were not ready to see—consider that the blinding might be the beginning of sight. The Damascus road is disorienting. But at the end of it, there is a stranger named Ananias who will call you brother, lay hands on you, and say: The Lord has sent me so that you may regain your sight.

The conversion of Saul is often presented as a model for dramatic, instantaneous transformation. But the text suggests something more nuanced. Saul spends three days in darkness—a period of gestation, of unknowing, of being unmade before being remade. The old certainties are dissolving. The new vision has not yet come. This liminal space—between blindness and sight, between death and birth—is where the deepest spiritual work happens. We want transformation to be instant. God often prefers it slow.