This week I met a blind boy named Jeff. Our group of 29 had split into four and hit the streets outside Pastor Amos's house for prayer walks. So, we walked. Stopping to pray for a man with a hurt leg, entering the house of a woman in a pink dress, sitting in the shade with a man whose house was destroyed in the earthquake. And then a random man came up to me and said in perfect English, "I have a cousin. He is blind. I want you to come pray for him."
We went.
The blind man's name is Jeff. He is 21 years old, and we found him sitting outside the door of his family's house under the shade of an overhead tarp. His eyes were open, blinking, and unfocused. His face was full of peace.
We talked for a bit. The cousin who had introduced us asked us to pray. To pray that the blind man would see. He said, "I have faith that God will heal him." So, we prayed. The Spirit of God came on that place. We prayed in faith, and we prayed in power.
And then we were interrupted. A stranger off the street (who also spoke English) who said God told him to find us walked under the tarp and started praying. And suddenly everything was wrong. We stopped praying, and Jeff was still blind. That man, that stranger, was not fighting on the same side we were. There was a sense of deceit, of confusion, of evil about him.
So, we left, prayed, and went back the next day. We got down on our knees. We read Scripture, prayed in tongues, and spoke the power of God in that place. Caylee, one of the teenage girls on the team, had a vision of a fiery snake slithering in and out of our feet on the ground we were standing on. As we prayed, the snake disappeared. She saw a new picture. The earth with the light of the sun blazing full on it, chasing away all darkness.
We stopped. We opened our eyes. Jeff still couldn't see.
So, we left, prayed, and went back the next day. This time, we talked. I started playing the guitar. Jeff smiled and said, "The Spirit of God is about to come on this place." I took his hand and shared with him how God sees him. He asked us to share when we had become Christians. We asked to hear his story. He said when he was 12, his mother covered up his right eye and realized her son could not see out of his left eye. He went to the doctors. Who could do nothing. When he was 16, he had an accident while playing soccer and lost the sight in his right eye. He went back to the doctors. Who could do nothing.
His family cried. His friends were afraid. Jeff kept the faith. He told us, "I prayed to God, 'Your will be done.' " He has been blind for five years now. He had to stop going to school. He can't read the Bible. He wants to be a pastor. He wants to preach the Gospel in all the world. This is what he said.
As we were talking, I felt compelled to ask him, "What do you want?" The way Jesus asked one of the men He healed. I expected Jeff to answer, "I want to see." But before I could even ask, the blind boy said simply, "I want to hear the voice of God." He said he had never heard the voice of God before and he wanted to. I asked again just to be sure. He was blind. Surely, he wanted sight more than anything. "What do you want?" Without hesitation, he repeated, "I want to hear the voice of God."
So, we prayed for him. Right then and there. We put our hands on him and asked the Holy Spirit to come and speak. And then we were silent and waited. And when Jeff spoke again, he said he heard a voice. A voice that said, "My little boy, you will see My deliverance. I am the truth and the way."
God answered. He spoke to the heart of a blind boy. I know. I have seen. I have seen a blind man ask, not for sight, but for the voice of God as the desire of his heart. I have seen the Spirit of the Living God come down and fill the shade under a tarp in front of a house in Haiti. I have looked into his face. I have held his hand.
We will go back to see Jeff whenever we get the chance this summer. We have found a child of God in him. We have found beauty and peace and courage and a faith that cannot be shaken. He says, "When God heals me and opens my eyes, I will share with the world the glory of God."
And now? While he is still blind? He looks into his heart - he lets us look into his heart - and we see the glory of God.
"I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see."
