One of the downfalls of being severely near-sighted (and I do mean severely), is that on occasion (read: more often than I care to admit) I get my contacts switched. The right one goes in the left eye and the left one goes in the right eye. Which for most people wouldn’t be a huge deal, except that even in my severe near-sightedness, one eye is much worse than the other!
You’d think I’d notice such a thing right away. Not so. It takes a while. This last time it took around two weeks for me to notice. Not that I didn’t notice my trouble seeing my computer screen. Or the eye strain. Or the difficulty seeing the television or a book. But I attributed my unclear vision to other things. Like tiredness. And dryness. So I added more drops to my eyes and continued on.
One morning, though, I realized how bad it was. I couldn’t read my Bible. Couldn’t see the words at all. At first, I again cited those other things. Then I thought with horror that maybe my age was kicking in and I needed reading glasses. All through the morning, I struggled, until finally— finally— I thought I ought to switch my contacts and make sure that wasn’t it.
And guess what? That was it! My world came back into focus in an instant! As I went on with my day, I wondered how many times that kind of thing happens with my spiritual eyes. They get off kilter just a bit. I notice, kind of, but don’t run right away to the most obvious cause, which in the spiritual sense is sin. I attribute it to other things, even to God’s absence from me instead of mine from Him. But in His mercy, the Lord allows my spiritual eyes to dim to such a place that I’m desperate to see, even if it means seeing myself as I really am in that moment.
I’m so thankful that the Lord has made a way for me to see with my physical eyes, even though they are flawed. But I’m even more thankful that He makes a way for me to see clearly with my spiritual eyes. And it all started with a baby in a manager.