Which is Better?

I was in fifth grade when I first got glasses. Sitting in the optometrist’s chair with the phoropter (the big swing arm device with all the lenses and focus wheels on it) against my face the doctor would ask, “Which is better: one or two?” As he flipped through the lens options, I always felt like I was taking a test that I was going to fail.

He said that my eyesight was at such a place (read: bad) that they were going to make some “special glasses” just for me. Later I found out that “special glasses” meant powerful enough to see craters on Mars with the all the added bulkiness of welding goggles. When I finally put them on, I was astonished: trees had leaves, the writing on the blackboard made sense, and movies were more than talking blobs. All this time I had blamed the forest, the teacher and the projector when the real problem was my lack of focus.

Sometimes I feel like I’m still sitting in that chair, except instead of looking at a chart topped with a big “E,” I’m looking at life. And God is clicking the lenses through and asking, “Which is better? One or two?”
“Two,” I say.
“One is better,” God replies.
“I like two,” I retort.
“But two is fuzzy, you know that,” he says.
“One hurts too much. It lets in too much light.”
“Two makes you miss things because they’re blurred.”
“But two doesn’t hurt. Two is comfortable. Two lets me see things how I’ve always seen them.”
“But one is the way I see things, and that’s how I want you to see too.”

We often spend too much time viewing life and others through a lens of our own shaping. Because of the sacrifice of Christ and His life-changing work, Paul writes, “Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh” (2 Corinthians 5:16). Paul experienced a permanent change of perspective; he received the right prescription. Life, and those in it, looked different to him. At times the truth was blinding for him, literally (Acts 9). At other times, his stand for truth brought him pain (2 Corinthians 11). But despite it all, he saw more clearly than ever before.

God doesn’t see things as we do, but with his leading, by his truth and the Holy Spirit, we can see things as he sees them, even if initially we think that his view lets in too much light for comfort.

Pray that…

We will read and understand the truth of God’s Word in a fresh and awe-inspiring way. – Psalm 119:18 Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.

God, by his Spirit, will allow us to see the great hope and spiritual treasure we have in Christ. – Ephesians 1:17-20 …That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places.

Our vision will be focused upon Jesus that he brings his light into every area of our lives. – Luke 11:34-36 “Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.”