Saint Athanasius Lutheran Church

When you look at something, you don't only see what you're looking at, you see what's around it as well, in your peripheral vision. This is good. We need our peripheral vision, especially when you're doing something like driving, to see things coming your way, dangers. But it can also be distracting. Things, maybe many things, drawing your attention away from the one thing you want to look at. So it is, I read recently, with a man who once could see but lost his sight, who claimed that he could see now more clearly -- without peripheral visual distractions -- than when he still had his physical sight. So it was, as we heard today, by the side of the road outside Jericho. A blind beggar named Bartimaeus saw with his ears.