Perfect Vision

I had my yearly eye exam yesterday. I love my eye exam. First of all, nothing about it hurts. It is all innocuous and easy. Sure I get a little stressed when I can't read the tiniest line of letters the doctor shows me, but besides a little sweaty palm when I think I should be seeing better, it is a piece of cake. Especially bumped up against the dentist or the dermatologist who is forever cutting off suspicious moles. Yes, I will take the eye doctor any day!

I do have a slight issue, however. Since I wear contacts and my near vision is growing worse as I get older, I either need bifocal contacts (expensive and lots of folk hate them) or the ingenious solution I have used for years. One contact is for near vision, the other for far. Somehow, the brain interprets the visual field accurately, and I can see both near and far clearly! However, if either of the prescriptions is off at all, I see neither near or far very well.

Of course, there is a spiritual message in this. I was thinking how we often are focused on events in our current life, our immediate situation, what is near to us in time and place...and forget about the bigger picture, the time and events in the future. On one hand, it is certainly good to live in the moment. But when we are also cognizant of what is further down the road for us, it can and does often change the choices we make now.

Here is a perfect example. The women who feel they are in impossible circumstances and choose abortion are caught in the here and now, the immediate crisis. Yet really, 9 months of pregnancy is but a blip on the screen of life. If they truly cannot support a child, many couples are waiting eagerly to adopt babies! The abortion-minded moms are not thinking about the ramifications ten years, twenty years, or longer from now. However, there is an enormous body of evidence that many if not most women experience deep regret, shame, despair, and depression over that "quick solution" to kill the baby. They have "near vision" (which in and of itself is faulty in my opinion) but no "far vision."

Here is another example. Many of us love to read the New Testament and apply the truths of Jesus' words to our situations...and of course, this is all good. However, if we are ignorant of what is foretold in Revelations, or the many passages that proclaim what the future holds for children of God (such as intense trials and persecution), we may fall away or be completely side-blinded by struggles when they come.

Both near and far vision are critical for us to see clearly. It is true for our eyes, and it is true in walking with God.

I am proud to say that with my one near contact and my one far contact, the doctor announced I had 20/20 eyesight...perfect vision!
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Philippians 3:13-14 

Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Isaiah 43:18-19 

“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

2 Corinthians 5:17 

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

1 Thessalonians 4:13-17 

But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.

2 Corinthians 5:1-21 

For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.