My Eyesight - My Perspective

That which seems evil, is it a cloud to bring rain, to bring a greater good to the whole of the world? Who would ever know the greater graces of comfort and perseverance, mercy and forgiveness, patience and courage, if no shadows fell over a life? 

Ann continues to read through her cards containing verses of scripture:

See now that I, I am He, and there is no god besides Me; It is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who heals... ~ Deuteronomy 32:39

Ann writes that these words reconfigure the battle field under her feet.

I grip the card and I know all our days are struggle and warfare (Job 14:14) and that the spirit-to-spirit combat I endlessly wage with Satan is this ferocious thrash for joy. He sneers at all the things that seem to have gone hideously mad in this sin-drunk world, and I gasp to say God is good.

Jesus said, "Your eye is a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is good, your whole body is filled with light. But when your eye is bad, your whole body is filled with darkness. And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, deep that darkness is!" (Matthew 6:22-23)

Today I read with horror the story of a father who attached a tire jack to his 2 y.o. daughter's car seat and then threw her/car seat and all into a river....she was awake.

I've a two y.o. grandson....

I wanted to scream....  but to whom? ..... to what?

Ann believes that if Satan can keep her eyes from the Word, her eyesight is too poor to read the light - to fill with light.

Bad eyes fill with darkness so heavy the soul aches because empty is never truly empty; empty is only a full, deepening darkness. So this is what it has to be. Eve in the Garden, Satan's hiss tickling the ear, 'Did God actually say...?'

You know, I have been raised in the church.  I grew up attending Sunday School, Youth Group, Young Adult classes....until I began teaching classes myself.  Yet, I continue to be amazed, and somewhat alarmed, by how little I know and how much there is still to learn, to study, to reflect upon....

I sometimes wonder if that is one of the weaknesses of the Church today.... this spiritual illiteracy that I feel within myself and notice in many others.

The world around me is dark!  It is much darker than I even realize because I live within its darkness.  I have been lulled into "thinking" I see, that I know the Light....

It is so easy to become a lazy Child of God.

Holding all that has gone wrong in her life and within the life of others, Ann writes:

Not using anything to bend the light of this world so I can read my own messy days? Spray on another layer of graffiti; worthless. 

So, I have been ambushed. 

Without God's Word as a lens, the world warps.

Ann slips her scripture card back into her pocket, thus "slipping on her glasses."

Sigh.....

I'm stepping through the season of Advent.  I'm reading stories I have heard all my life!  I "know" these stories so well, I don't even need the Bible to tell these stories.

Yet, after all my Advent seasons, this Advent I am wondering if I "know" the main character of the story as well as I know his story?

I am grateful for authors like AnnVoskamp, Joyce Rupp, Phil Gulley, Eugene Peterson....and so many others who challenge me to continually check my eyesight.... to continually challenge me to ask hard questions.....

At the same time, I am grateful for my parents and grandparents, for Sunday School teachers and professors, for friends and for those joining me on my journey.  I am grateful because through them and within them I have the hope and the courage to pause and look hard in the mirror....

In other words, it is taking an entire village to raise this Child of God! : )




Many Blessings ~  Sandi