When I was ten years old, I was taken to an Optometrist. I don’t know if my parents described what that was, or why, exactly, I was visiting that place. (Isn’t it surprising how many things are like that for kids, just being taken here and there because we’re told that’s what we’re going to do, but not necessarily the why?). I don’t remember anything about the testing that was done. I guess there must have been several weeks of waiting after that appointment, then being taken back there. It was then, I think, I fully realized I was getting glasses, though still not entirely sure why. What is most vivid to me is, with the new spectacles placed on my nose, being instructed to look out the front window of the building! I don’t know if I gasped or not, but, there, across the street was a red building, and there were lines between the bricks! I’d never noticed that detail before! Once home, I took closer notice that our grass was made up of individual blades! Wow! All these things that had existed without my paying attention! Lots more discoveries were to come, including now clearly reading what was written on the chalkboard at the front of the school classroom. Hmm. Come to think of it, I wonder if that’s where this all started.
I had always been able to see, and if asked I would have said, yes, I can see with no problem. What the testing and my new glasses revealed though, is that there’s seeing and then there’s really seeing. Seeing sort of and seeing with precision. I hadn’t realized that I was missing out on seeing things others around me were seeing.
The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the church at Ephesus, speaks of another type of seeing, not physical seeing but a spiritual seeing necessary for walking in the ‘all’ that God has prepared for us: “I pray that the light of God will illuminate the eyes of your imagination, flooding you with light, until you experience the full revelation of the hope of his calling – that is, the wealth of God’s glorious inheritances that he finds in us, his holy ones!” Eph. 1:18, TPT. (I love that it’s inheritances plural! We are, all of us, His inheritances!) Another thing that’s incredible about this part of his prayer is that he doesn’t say the eyes of your ‘understanding.’ This would be what we might expect from our Western mindset, but ‘imagination’ shows Paul’s Eastern mindset, non-Western to be sure. Paul knew that there was a higher dimension to the faith walk than simply what could be grasped by intelligence. Even Jesus indicates sometimes physical sight creates spiritual blindness. And centuries before Jesus, God speaks a warning to His people in Jeremiah 5:21, VOICE: “Hear Me, you foolish, heartless people. Even with eyes and ears you are still blind and deaf to what is happening.”
Maybe we all need an ‘appointment’ with the Divine Optometrist to help us see what is really happening, what is the Big Picture and what is, from an eternal perspective, just noisy distraction and spiritual detour. I know love provides rose-colored glasses, but we might need Jesus-colored glasses to truly ‘see.’ I say, please make me that appointment – again! PD
