I Can See Clearly Now

Last week I got some new glasses.  I’d needed them for some time, but just kept putting it off.  Not only did I need a different prescription, but the anti-reflective coating they had put on my glasses was flaking off.  So it was well past time to get them replaced.

The difference between the new glasses and the old is amazing.  It’s not just that things sharper and clearer, although they are.  The big difference is that, when the anti-reflective coating flaked off, it made it like I was looking through a haze.  Now I can see things as they truly are.  The world not only looks clearer, it actually looks brighter.  I put the old glasses on and then the new, just so I could better see the difference.  It’s incredible.

Before I put the new glasses on, though, I never would’ve believed the difference was that big.  As I said, I knew I needed new glasses, but I had no idea how bad things had gotten with the old glasses.  I’d able to function okay with them--I was fine to drive or to read or to do any of the other things I need to do--so I hadn’t thought it would be that big a deal to replace them.  Boy, was I wrong.

So I wondered, how could that be?  How could my vision, through those old glasses, have gotten so much worse without my noticing it more?  Well, the answer is that it happened gradually.  My eyesight changed, so that I needed a new prescription, but it happened gradually, so that I did not notice it at first.  The anti-reflective coating did not all come off at once--it might actually have been easier to see if it had.  But in fact, it came off gradually, a bit at a time, so that it did not seem like that big of a deal at first.  Ultimately, my sight through those old glasses changed tremendously, but it changed so gradually that I did not notice how big the change was.

It seems to me that something similar can happen when we drift away from God.  It happens gradually.  We don’t even notice it at first.  Eventually, we start to notice that something’s not quite right, not the way it should be, but we don’t think it makes that much of a difference.  We know we really should do something about it, just like I knew I really should get new glasses.  But we don’t think it’s that important.  So, we let it slide.  We put it off.  We tell ourselves that we’ll get back in touch with God later, when we have time.

The thing is that when I did not get new glasses, when I waited, the only person I was hurting was myself.  I was making things harder on myself than they needed to be.  I was getting by, but I was missing out on a lot of stuff.  That’s true of our relationship with God, too.  When we drift away from God, and we don’t get back in touch with God, the only person we’re hurting is ourselves.  And we’re hurting ourselves by making things harder on ourselves than they need to be.  We may be getting by, but we’re missing out on a lot of stuff.  We’re missing out on feeling God’s love and God’s guidance in our lives.  And that’s too bad.

Our eyesight is very important.  But our relationship with God is even more important.  Let’s not neglect either one.  Get your eyes examined, so your vision can be all that it should be.  But examine your relationship with God, too, so it can be all that it should be.  If we can see God clearly, everything else will fall into place.