Did you know that there are 600 million persons with disabilities in the world today? One organization that is having a profound impact in helping provide access to basic healthcare services to many of these people with disabilities is an organization called Christian Blind Mission (CBM). Originally founded in 1908 to serve individuals suffering from blindness, CBM now works tirelessly to improve the quality of life for all people; no matter the disability.
In the area of blindness CBM has over 100 years of experience and just this year (2020) performed their 15millionth cataract operation.1 For many of these individuals, many of them children, total blindness became sight due to these wonderful surgeries, mostly in third world countries.
One day, about 25 years ago, I remember sharing a message, at a church in Brooklyn, New York, about the fabulous work that CBM is doing around the world. I shared that many ophthalmologists volunteer a year or two of their lives to go to third world countries to use their skills to perform cataract surgeries and other sight saving procedures. I then posed the following question to the congregation I was ministering to: What is the greater miracle – healing a blind eye through someone who has the supernatural gift of healing or the ophthalmologist healing a blind eye through modern-day surgical techniques. Now I won’t get into the discussion whether the supernatural gift of healing is for today or if it vanished with the completion of the Bible, since this topic has evangelical Christians on both sides of the argument. I personally believe that this supernatural gift is not for today but that God does sometimes supernaturally heal in response to believer’s prayers. However, let’s assume for now that this gift is operational for today.
My main contention is that the greater miracle was done by the modern-day surgery of the ophthalmologists. And the reason I shared this was as follows. If someone had the gift of divine healing they would just need to touch the blind eye and seeing would come about – no great sacrifice is required on the healer’s part. However, what would possess these highly paid eye doctors (some make upwards of $500,000 a year) to leave their very comfortable lifestyles and move to countries where squalor is a way of life, and use their God-given medical skills to bring sight to the blind. I then shared that it is the love of Christ and their passion for doing God’s will that moved in the hearts of these gifted doctors to sacrifice so much of their time and life to help their fellow global neighbors.
My friends the biggest miracle today is a transformed heart that can only come from a personal relationship with Jesus. A transformed heart leads to a sacrificial life but the joy this new lifestyle can bring is simply is amazing. Can you imagine the joy that an ophthalmologist experiences when he takes off the bandages from a young boy, who has been blind his whole life, and can now see the beautiful world we live in for the first time – it must be truly incredible. Not only that but this type of joy can only be experienced through true sacrificial living.
To me one of the greatest proofs that Jesus is real is how He transforms lives from bondage to free and from sinner to saint. And how He brings true joy into a human heart through sacrificial living. This joy is not possible except for a new heart which can only happen when Jesus performs spiritual surgery on the old heart. The transformed life is truly a miracle!