“For we live by faith, not by sight.” (2 Corinthians 5:7)
I have a friend who recently had cataracts removed from each of her eyes. Months ago when she last visited her optometrist, she was informed that nothing more could done to improve her vision until she had this surgery. Over a course of the last several years, she had come to realize if she was driving in a strange area, it was easy to miss a street sign due to blurred vision. She had difficulty engaging in some of her hobbies, and routine chores like cooking and cleaning were more complicated because of her inability to focus. Trees and grass looked green, but she could no longer distinguish individual leaves or blades which were distorted. Now weeks after the procedure, she barely needed glasses. Many objects had taken on a new appearance, and colors of many things were different or more vivid than she had remembered. Her visual perspective had changed over time, and she hadn’t even realized it. Her view of life had become compromised.
Unless we stay focused on the right things, we can lose perspective in our spiritual life as well. Much of our faith is dedicated to the unseen. In this day and age, we live in a ‘show-me mentality’ world. If we do not keep grounded in God’s word and stay connected with Him in our prayer life – our faith can become blurred. For the skeptic, it can become easier to doubt than it is to believe. I remember the first time I saw someone walking down the aisle of a food store presumably talking to themselves. I caught myself smiling when I realized that they were actually talking on their phone. But unless we truly see the smartphone or the blue tooth connection device, it’s so easy to jump to another conclusion. It creates a blind spot in our judgement, and we can almost comprehend how the non-believer must react when they observe us worshiping or praying to a God they cannot see. “Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely” (1 Corinthians 13:12).
Most of us are familiar with the term blind spot as it applies to our car, usually defined by areas in which we cannot see other cars around us. If someone is passing as you are driving, you can see them in your rear or side view mirror, but there is a certain spot where they temporarily disappear. Yet they are still there. If we become insensitive to this blind spot, we can place ourselves in an unsafe situation. The human eye also has a blind spot—a small area on the retina which escapes our awareness. This is because our brain fills in this blank area with the surrounded images, making our field of vision appear to be seamless. We not only have blind spots in driving and in our eyes, we have them in life as well including gaps in our perception that keep us from seeing the truth about others and ourselves. Too many of us live unnecessarily in defeat, restrained by our own mistakes or the faults of others. We stumble around in life with blind spots frequently blocking the work God wants us to do.
When the Pharisees investigated Jesus’ healing of a blind man, they asked Him if they too were blind? He said that because they could yet see, they were guilty of sin and therefore spiritually blind (John 9:35-41). The Apostle Paul put it another way: “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18). Not unlike my friend who lived with her cataracts and imperfect vision for many years, we are often blind to what we think we can see until the Great Physician reveals to us that our world had in fact been one big blur for a very long time.
REFLECTION: Have there been times when you have lost perspective and had blind spots in certain areas of your life? Are there persons in your life whom you can trust to make you aware when you are developing blind spots? Helen Keller once said: “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.” Can you apply her wisdom to correcting some of the blind spots in your journey?
A NEW LOOKUP DEVOTION IS UPLOADED EACH WEEK. THE NEXT WEEKLY POSTING WILL BE ON SAT., JUNE 11, 2016. COMMENTS ARE WELCOMED.