Seeing Clearly - February 1, 2024

Yesterday was one of those sapphire blue-sky days.  A kind of day where you look out on the horizon and feel you could see forever.  The cerulean sky didn’t lay claim to a single cloud. There was nothing to get in the way of viewing what felt like infinity above me, but the occasional seagull gliding by.

Seeing clearly is necessary to life.  When the world looks blurry, we can’t wait to grab our eyeglasses and get our world into focus.   If you’re my age, you realize that all the print on prescription bottles and food containers has shrunk.  I’m pretty sure it would be hard to function without my “readers.”  How would I know how long it takes to microwave the frozen broccoli package?  And how many of those pills am I supposed to take today?

When we come home in the evening to a dark home, we barely get in the door and the first thing we do is find the switch to turn on the lights.  Without that light, we would stumble through the room, most likely bumping into furniture or tripping like Dick Van Dyke over the ottoman and taking a fall on the living room floor. If you’re north of age 40, you really, really want to avoid this!

We love to see our life clearly too, don’t we? 

There’s a type of comfort that comes from structure, routine and knowing exactly what will happen at any given time.  But as life would have it, we don’t always get that clarity we so desperately seek.  When we don’t, we may muddle through our days, we may slip, stagger and limp along.  We feel as if we have lost our footing.  We are searching for something strong and stable, and we can’t seem to get a hold of it.

We realize we will not know everything we want to know in this life, but that doesn’t keep most of us from trying to figure it all out anyway. I am surely guilty of this.  In fact, God asks us to be comfortable with not knowing it all.  Yet, I still find this an almost impossible task. I especially feel this way when my bodily pain is at its worst.  Each time, it feels like it will last forever.  And each time I want to know exactly if or when it will end.  I feel blind because I can’t see tomorrow or any other day after that.  It’s hard to find my way.

When we are faced with the darkness of not knowing something we are longing to know, that’s when it’s time to “put God on.”  Just like we put on our eyeglasses and just as we put on the lights in our homes.

“For it is you who light my lamp; the Lord my God lightens my darkness, for by you I can run against a troop and by my God I can leap over a wall.  This God-His way is perfect; the word of the Lord proves true; He is a shield for all those who take refuge in Him. -Psalms 18:28-30

It is God who can illuminate our life.  He is the light of the world, yet He is our personal light.  We can carry this light with us, through day and night, through triumph and tragedy. As we walk our earthly path that is sometimes strewn with rocks and stones, His light is a lantern to our feet. And this light can never be extinguished. 

Isn’t it great that whenever we can’t see, all we have to do is “put God on.” 

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