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Posts Tagged ‘vision’

The Eyes Have It

Posted in Christian, Devotional, Life Experiences, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on April 6, 2025| Leave a Comment »

“God gave us two for a reason.” That has been my mantra the past few weeks. The left eye I had surgery on last fall developed a whopping cataract, a side effect that can happen, and of which I had been told very well might… in a year or so. However, it came to be in just a few months.

Because I was still “post-op” in that eye, I had to undergo laser surgery to have a corneal transplant. The doctor explained that my distant vision would no longer require me to wear glasses –for the first time since 2nd grade, some sixty-odd years ago– that part I heard clearly. But that it would be fixed in place so my close-up vision would not be clear anymore, evaded my ears. I’d never had to use readers, so why would I need them now? (I still don’t get that part by the way.)

Initially, I was ecstatic. I could see leaves, details, and colors! Shock, and the deja vu of not seeing out of the eye at all last fall, sent me into a tailspin when I tried to read my phone with just that eye. All fuzzy and out of focus. What was happening? The doctor on call coaxed me off the cliff.

After a long discussion, I decided I didn’t want the same plight to happen to my dominant right eye, the good eye, the eye I can still read with 20/20 clarity. So I canceled the second eye surgery for the tiny cataract that was developing, of which they initially insisted I would need, so my eyes would be “even.”

I decided to go mono-vision, meaning one eye would see 20/30 into the distance without corrective eyewear, and I’d train the other eye to compensate by focusing on things I needed to see close-up. So far, it is working, and I am enjoying not having glasses pressed onto the ridge of my nose.

WHERE HAVE I FOUND GOD IN ALL THIS? I think as Christians, perhaps we need mono-vision. We need to adjust the eyes we are used to viewing the world with and begin to make our dominant vision see what God wants us to see, so we can become what He wants us to be. He sees beyond the moment and beyond the exterior into the heart. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7)

We can, and should, retrain our vision. Paul said at the time he saw things dimly, as if in a smudged mirror, but soon he’d see things face to face, the way God sees. (1 Corinthians 13:12)

It will take time, patience, and diligence to shift how we view things. But fuzzing out the negative and bad so we can focus on the good may be the counter-cultural action we all need to practice. Let one eye clearly concentrate on what will happen in the distance when Christ returns, while the other peers into the heart of those we encounter. We might just see ourselves reflected in those God puts in our path–people who are not perfect but need a forgiving Savior.

God gave us two eyes to see for a reason…. perhaps He is also giving us two spiritual eyes, for a reason.

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Burst My Bubble

Posted in Christian, Devotional, Life Experiences, tagged , , , , , , , on October 27, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash

A routine eye check revealed something I had not envisioned…literally. I had felt something was wrong…eye strain maybe? A new prescription needed? Little did I know I could barely see out of my non-dominant, left eye. All was cloudy, skewed, and fuzzy. I had a hole in the macular at the back of my retina.

So I had surgery. The eye specialist inserted a gas bubble into my eye and I had to keep my head down for days while it positioned correctly to allow the hole at the back of my retina to knit back together. After the surgery was deemed a success, I had to endure the gas bubble clouding my vision for several weeks while it slowly diminished. The eye surgeon had said he couldn’t exactly predict when the bubble would evaporate. It depended on each individual. But it would happen. I had to be patient and follow his instructions.

At first, it was hard to see around this cloudy black thing. I had to really concentrate. But slowly it began to become less of a distraction and more of just an annoyance. Black floaters began to lift off, and I had the urge to swat them like gnats. By the second week, it reduced to a navy blue opaque dot with a blue veil in the center and it lowered in my vision field to somewhere around my lower eyelid, then my cheek, then mouth, then chin. It became the size of a quarter, then nickel, then dime, and then a bead. At last, this morning when I awoke, it was gone.

Where did I see God in all this, other than Him leading me to an excellent eye surgeon?

This bubble represented a sin in my life that I had not yet dealt with because I wasn’t quite sure I had to. Or maybe it was easier to just ignore it. My dominant faith covered it up and compensated…for a while. But deep down I knew something was not quite right. Once revealed by the Great Physician that I had a hole that distorted my perception of Kingdom living, I was in total dismay, and a tad frightened.

God inserted a “bubble” around that sin. At first, it was all I could see. It became so magnified in my life that it clouded everything else. But little by little, God’s mercy worked in my life. I had to be patient and follow His instructions. My attitude and actions began to slowly change. The hole healed, and the sin’s influence and tendency began to diminish. My thought pattern slowly altered and one day I realized it was no longer part of how I saw the world.

For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more,  so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 5:19-21).

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