Saul's Sight

After Saul had his vision of the Savior on the road to Damascus, he “arose from the earth; and when his eyes were opened, he saw no man…. And he was three days without sight” (Acts 9:8-9).  I think both the fact that he went blind and stayed that way for three days is symbolic of the change that all of us need to make as we are born again.  Paul had to learn to see again through the lens of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  He had spent his whole life seeing through the myopic lens of their strict laws and rites, and despite his deep knowledge of the scriptures—for he was “taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers” and was “exceedingly zealous of the traditions of [the] fathers”—he had not been able to recognize the very Giver of the law (Acts 22:3).  After being three days blind and then receiving his sight from Ananias, “straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues” (Acts 9:20).  But the Church was understandably wary of him, and I don’t think he was really ready to be the missionary that the Lord had in store for him to become.  He told the Galatians what he did after his conversion: “I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus.  Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter” (Galatians 1:17-18).  He spent three years in Arabia and in Damascus, presumably away from most of the disciples, and my feeling is that he had to retrain himself to see the way that the Lord wanted him to see.  Three days blind and three years in preparation—all symbolic I believe of the transition from spiritual death to life.  Jonah spent three days “dead” in a whale before miraculously being saved and given a second chance, and the Savior spent three days in the tomb before His resurrection.  Paul needed a rebirth and he needed new spiritual eyes, and I think he could say after this time of preparation the same words as the man who had his physical sight restored: “One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see” (John 9:25).