It was very early, and the sunlight came through the window almost sideways, colored like pollen. The fields outside were cast in that haze. Easter had just passed, and where the table pushed up against the windowsill there was a basket made out of that plastic canvas stuff threaded with yarn, with the face of a bucktoothed rabbit on the front. In the bottom lay a few small chocolate eggs wrapped in foil, the dregs of that year’s candy she kept around for guests and neighbor children. It made for a poor and paltry scene, but I had my revelation even so. I thought about the blind man in the Gospel, the one they bring to Jesus to test him. They say to him, so, was this man born blind because of his own sin, or because of what his parents did? Because everybody thought it had to be one or the other. But Jesus, he said no, this man was born blind so the glory of God could be revealed in him. And then he touched that man’s eyes and healed his sight. It made me think, maybe there’s a purpose for this sadness that I just can’t figure out, the way that man lived his whole life up until Jesus came along with everyone having the wrong ideas about why he was blind.
