Luke is the evangelist who is read because of his love for the dispossessed of his time -- groups like the Gentiles, or women. But Luke has another endearing characteristic. He doesn't like to leave material out of his Gospel -- somehow or another, he'll manage to work it all in. In the latter part of the seventeenth chapter, there are several sayings which are apparently about the "last days." But these are mixed with other verses that seem to imply that these "last days" will not be seen, in the usual sense that we understand seeing. Indeed, the section in question begins with the words, "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you."

A contemporary of Conan Doyle, who was thought by many people at the time to be a better writer than the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, wrote about a detective called Max Carrados whose most significant characteristic was that he was blind. But not being sighted didn't prevent Carrados from "seeing" plenty of things that escaped his colleagues' attention. In one story he knelt on the floor of a room and groped in front of him to find a large metal plate. He was told that the plate was there to cover the floor from water damage from a leaking window. But Carrados realized its purpose was to help deliver a lethal electric shock to the murderer's wife when -- as was her custom -- she leaned out of the window at night in her bare feet.

When we practice Step 11, we are lucky in that we cannot see what we are looking for -- at least, not with our eyes. One Buddhist writer urges us therefore to "see" with our ears, our nose, with all our senses when we meditate. Like Carrados, the fact that we cannot see paradoxically can help us in our search. For what we are looking for is -- as Jesus reminds us in Luke's Gospel -- within us, where our eyesight can be of little help.