What I've Been Missing

In my reading from Acts 10 & 11 this week, I was struck by what happened with the vision God gave Peter of the sheet full of animals (Acts 10:13-16; 11:7-10). In both recounts of the vision, this same sequence of events takes place three times.

That made me think: Three times Peter heard God say that these foods were fine for him to eat, yet he would not believe it! Three times Peter refused to eat and called the foods "unclean" even though three times God said he had made them "clean."

This is a striking example of how blinded to God's will we can be by our presuppositions. Things that we've been taught and practiced that have become deeply engrained in us can cause us to be unable to hear even direct revelation from God to the contrary.

For instance, for many decades Christian people were racists who strongly defended segregation and even slavery. This was the case even though they read in their Bibles that God loves everyone and that Jesus came to save people from every tribe and nation and to bring them together around his throne. They read in several passages about how God doesn't show favoritism and how Jesus and his disciples broke down racial barriers. It's hard for us to get it. Why were they so blind? Because their racism was deeply engrained in them from childhood and they couldn't hear what God was saying to the contrary.

There are a number of positions that were drilled into me theologically by my parents and teachers as a child that took me many years to finally see that God was saying something different. I'm not immune to the kind of blinders that Peter wore. It took the Word of God, coupled with an eye-opening experience, to jar Peter's mind open. And that's often what's it's taken for me. But I will try to continually welcome God to re-instruct me and to correct my misunderstandings.

Lord, open my eyes to see what I've been missing all along. Amen.