Keeping the lights on is a national preoccupation. It’s also a good idea. Candles are just not up to it. But darkness is something that some people have to cope with. I remember way back being the only sighted person at a crowded canteen table at the Leamington guide dog training centre. Seeing the light is an immense privilege.
Milton, our greatest religious poet, wrote a sonnet on his darkness. It also influenced his poem ‘Samson Agonistes’ as he wrote ‘Dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon’. But his sonnet is of more immediate interest. It has a man puzzled about how he should respond as a man of faith to his sight-loss. He refers to his one talent (though that is unduly modest) having no outlet. He foolishly asks: ’Doth God exact day-labour, light deny’d?’ Patience gives an answer and that is the concluding part of the sonnet, ending with the familiar words: ‘They also serve who only stand and wait.’
There is no self-pity in the sonnet, no desperate hope to be free of this disability. Instead, the Creator and his cosmic interests are in view. They are best served – whatever our circumstances – by bearing the mild yoke that is the lot of God’s earthly creatures. Milton shows a stern resolve in doing his duty.
We can hardly avoid turning to John 9, when we think of what it means to be blind. Amid the torrent of argument about the nature of blindness, one thing stands out. Here is a man who had been blind from birth but was now given sight. ‘I was blind and now I can see.’ Nothing could be plainer. His story inspired Newton as he wrote ‘Amazing grace’ and it inspires us as we think of the move into light that the Gospel represents. But we have also to remember that loss of sight is an impediment that many have to cope with. And the presence of guide dogs on our streets reminds us that much can be done in practical terms to change things for the better.
And for all of us the patience to bear the mild yoke, to wait, is something we have to learn.
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