When I Consider How My Light is Spent

It might be easier for a contemporary audience familiar with the cultural attitudes toward those with disabilities to understand the poem’s thematic concern with blindness. But it is difficult for a contemporary audience, Christian or otherwise, in which the culture has so radically reconceived of the Christian God to understand the depth and conviction of the Puritan Christian perception of God’s place in the cosmos. God’s place is absolute. In a contemporary culture where religion itself has been appropriated and then weaponized by self-serving politicians and self-appointed faux-prophets, or where religion has been trivialized into a trite expression of self-promotion and ego, or where religion has been simplified to a bland ritual with little conviction save routine, Milton’s poem positions God at the center of, well, everything. His grace cannot be earned, His love cannot be assumed, His attention cannot be secured by any—any—efforts of His creations. The majesty and sovereignty of God demands the capitalized pronoun He.

At the heart of Milton’s sonnet is the reassurance, difficult for a contemporary culture to fully embrace, that God’s love is anything but unconditional. God so oversees the entirety of his Creation that no individual entity, no tiny fragment of His providential care can assert anything without His foreknowledge and approval.