When We No Longer See

The terrible mercy of being led into exile

“You have eyes to see, but see not; you have ears to hear, but hear not.”

— Ezekiel 12:2

There is a blindness that comes not because there is no light, but because we have grown accustomed to not looking.

There is a deafness that comes not because God has ceased speaking, but because we have learned how to hear everything except the word that would require us to change.

This is the terrible warning in Ezekiel.

The people have eyes. They have ears. They have the Law, the Temple, the prophets, the memory of everything God has done. Their tragedy is not ignorance. Their tragedy is that they can remain surrounded by the things of God while becoming unable to recognize what God is doing.

And this should frighten every one of us.

For rebellion does not always appear as open defiance. Sometimes it appears as certainty. Sometimes as habit. Sometimes as the conviction that because we have always understood things in a particular way, God must continue to act according to that understanding.

The Fathers feared this deeply.

They knew how easily the heart can use even holy things to protect itself from God. Prayer can become habit. Theology can become possession. Obedience can become self-justification. Authority can become control. Tradition can become something we defend rather than something that judges and converts us.

Even repentance can become something we imagine other people need.

And so the elders continually brought the disciple back to one place:

Attend to yourself.

Do not ask first who else is blind.

Ask what you refuse to see.

Do not ask first who has failed to listen.

Ask what word from God you have quietly decided you cannot hear.

This is why the strange action commanded of Ezekiel is so powerful.

“Prepare for yourself an exile’s baggage.”

Take only what can be carried.

Leave behind what cannot.

Go out in the darkness.

Even dig through the wall if necessary.

There is something almost monastic about the image. Everything unnecessary is stripped away. The familiar landscape disappears. The structures that once gave security can no longer be relied upon. A man walks into the night carrying only what he can bear upon his shoulder.

We usually think of exile only as punishment.

But Scripture knows another mystery as well.

Sometimes exile becomes revelation.

Abraham must leave his country.

Israel must leave Egypt.

Elijah must go into the wilderness.

The prodigal must discover the famine of the far country before remembering his father’s house.

And Christ Himself goes outside the city bearing the Cross.

Again and again, God permits the familiar world to fall away so that the heart may discover what cannot be taken from it.

This does not mean every departure is holy or every disruption is God’s will. We are remarkably capable of baptizing our own desires. Discernment remains necessary. Repentance remains necessary. Obedience to truth remains necessary.

But Ezekiel gives us a more disturbing possibility to consider:

We may sometimes be so attached to the place where we are standing that we cannot hear God telling us that the time has come to move.

Or we may be so determined to move that we cannot hear Him telling us to remain.

The question is never simply Where do I want to be?

The question is:

Where is God?

And perhaps even that must finally become simpler:

Am I willing to belong to Him wherever He places me?

The modern elders repeatedly return us to this poverty. Do not construct imaginary futures. Do not demand that God explain Himself. Do not make an idol of security. Do not cling even to your own understanding of the spiritual life.

Remain before God.

Repent.

Pray.

Listen.

And be willing to lose what must be lost.

This speaks very deeply to me.

There are seasons when we desperately want circumstances to resolve themselves so that life can begin again. We imagine peace waiting on the other side of an answer: when this is settled, when that door opens, when uncertainty ends, when we know where we belong.

But perhaps the exile itself is already the place of encounter.

Perhaps the darkness through which Ezekiel walks is not empty.

Perhaps God is there.

The great danger is not that we should lose a place, a position, a role, a reputation, an institution, or even an entire vision of what we imagined our life would be.

The great danger is that in trying to preserve these things we might cease to hear God.

“Eyes to see, but see not.”

That is the warning.

And therefore the prayer must become very small.

Lord, let me see.

Lord, let me hear.

Lord, do not allow me to use anything—not my wounds, not my convictions, not my history, not even the things I love—to hide from You.

If I must remain, teach me to remain.

If I must go, teach me to go.

If I must carry only a small bundle into the darkness, let me carry it without bitterness.

If everything familiar disappears, let me discover that You have not.

For this is what exile finally reveals.

Much of what we thought necessary was not necessary.

Much of what we thought permanent was passing.

Much of what we thought belonged to us had only been entrusted to us for a time.

God alone remains.

And perhaps this is why the final words of the passage are not simply about captivity or judgment.

“They shall know that I am the Lord.”

That is where every stripping must finally lead.

Not to vindication.

Not to proving who was right.

Not to the condemnation of those who failed to see.

But to knowledge of God.

The exile has done its work when there is nothing left in the heart but this:

God is.

I am before Him.

He knows me.

That is enough.