See Clearly

I woke up early this morning and the world was fuzzy, my eyes particularly dry.  It took several minutes of blinking to bring everything back to normal. I'd gone to bed at midnight -- after 15 straight hours of editing my book.  It has a strong pro-life message, and I wanted it out (if all goes perfectly) by Thursday, the 42nd anniversary of Roe V Wade. I figured I must have really strained my poor eyes.

Finally, all the blurry was gone after much blinking. I was so tired, but I had another edit run through before sending the files for review. I went to put in my contacts. That's when I realized I had never removed my contacts the night before. I had slept all night with my contacts still stuck on my eyes. That cannot be good, but I had only had closed eyes, deprived of oxygen, for 6 hours.

There must be a symbol in this, besides stupidity and fatigue.

When the king of Syria surrounded the camp of Elisha and his servant to seize them, the servant quaked with fear. Elisha and he had arisen early in the morning to see Syrian soldiers, horses and chariots surrounding the city. The servant cries to Elisha, We are in massive trouble now...what do we do? This is impossible. I cannot see how we are going to get out of this mess, Batman! (This is a paraphrase.)

Elisha then delivers one of my favorite rallying cries in all of scripture:
“Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” (2 Kings 6:16)

Then Elisha says to his frightened servant, Rub your eyes! Your contacts are already there! You just have to realize you can see!  See clearly the encouragement of God! oh Lord, help this man to see he forgot to take out his contacts and if he just lets your healing oxygen fill his dried out orbs, he will see you are there and always have been. (Paraphrase again.)

The servant then looks around, and sees the chariots of God all about them, in such vast numbers that there is little doubt who will win the battle.

I have another six hours of edit to go...I hadn't planned to publish quite this soon, but it seems so appropriate that my book, a call to examine the precious value of life, come out on the anniversary of the day when our nation chose to devalue it. As a nation, I hope we will collectively rub out tired eyes, see God clearly, and understand.

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  ^{2 Kings 6: 15-17}

¹⁵ When the servant of the man of God rose early in the morning and went out, behold, an army with horses and chariots was all around the city. And the servant said, “Alas, my master! What shall we do?” ¹⁶ He said, “Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” ¹⁷ Then Elisha prayed and said, “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.” So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.