Vision Correction

I remember the first time I put on a pair of reading glasses.  We were traveling at night and my husband, Phil, asked me to look at the map to give him some guidance.  I tried to read the map under the dim lights that were on the rearview mirror and in my frustration at not being able to see, I grabbed up the reading glasses Phil relied on.  Suddenly the words that I thought were not visible to the human eye became clear.  The harsh reality was that the letters being small was not the problem; the way my 40-something eyes saw the letters, however, was a problem.

 I was hooked on reading glasses.  I went through the vacation with reading glasses on my head, glasses for nearsightedness on my nose and a pair of sunglasses on my nose over the glasses for my nearsightedness.  I juggled three pairs of glasses through the whole trip and became painfully aware that I had a problem.

I not only had a visual problem, I also discovered a slight pride problem.  When we would enter a town or city or stop for whatever reason, I would take all the glasses off except the sunglasses and pretend that I was cool and not needy in the area of visual correction. 

What might happen if we would just swallow our pride and acknowledge that our view of God could use some correction instead of walking around with spiritual sunglasses looking cool and pretending we can navigate our way through life just fine?   Reaching a place where we begin to recognize that our vision of the greatness of God is blurry creates an opportunity for God to begin the correction process from the cloudiness in our thinking that causes us to stumble in our faith.

Without faith it is impossible to please God, yet many times when I go through life and face struggles, difficult circumstances, grief, and spiritual and relational challenges, I have 20/20 fear vision and my understanding of the greatness of God and what He is capable of doing in every situation of my life is fuzzy.   My faith needs a visual correction to be able to see the possibilities of what God can do in all of my alarming circumstances. 

My fears will become blurry as my faith in the awesome power of God becomes clearer.  As I begin to know Him in His love and begin to understand His wisdom and greatness, I can release my concerns to Him and rest in His ability to take care of me. 

There are times in life when believing in the love of God is by sheer faith.  Sometimes God doesn’t act the way I think He should—He doesn’t act as fast as I think He should.  It is hard to reconcile Him having the power to order my circumstances in a way that would be more comfortable, yet choosing to let me walk through pain.  At these times, loving Him is challenging and believing in His love for me is only by faith. 

It takes faith to believe in God’s love when He isn’t working out the plans for our life in a way that looks “good” to us.  It is hard to believe in His goodness and love when we are abused by people who should be showing love to us—it takes faith to believe in Him at these times.  It is hard to believe in His provision when our resources are slim and not enough—it takes faith to believe He is providing a better plan than just a balanced budget.  It is hard to believe He is powerful to heal when we have been diagnosed with cancer—it takes faith to believe He is healing in ways besides just the cancer.

The combination of God's awesome power, wisdom and faithfulness plus the addition of His incredible love provide the safety net for me to trust in His ability to be in control of my life.  It takes both the ability to see God’s greatness and to trust in His love when He is working in ways that can be confusing to my view.

Lord, give me a visual correction in my ability to see you for who You are in Your greatness and power and to see You as the true lover of my soul and able to make me more in the image of Jesus in every situation.  Help me not to doubt Your love for me as you work out a greater plan for me—a “soul” plan, a plan to increase my faith.