I read somewhere that “aging gracefully” is a nice way of saying you need to download bigger fonts for your computer screen and buy comfier pants for your waist. The holidays always cause me to appreciate elastic waistbands, and in my 47th year of life, I’m coming to appreciate bigger fonts.
I used to pride myself on my eyesight. For years and years, I proudly left the optometrist office with 20/20 vision. Then it started to happen. My academic journey required a ton of reading, and the words started to get a little fuzzy. No problem. A cheap pair of reading glasses allowed me to see clearly. Then the fuzzy became blurry, and the 20/20 vision was no longer on my chart, so glasses were prescribed, albeit minimal strength.
But those blasted computer fonts and phone screen fonts kept changing on me. Then, a few months ago, things really started to spiral. Suddenly, publishers started printing books in such a way that the print was fuzzier when I wore my glasses as opposed to not wearing them, but things far away, like print on the TV screen or the snoozing, I mean smiling, faces of my congregation got blurry. In recent weeks, when looking at something in print or on my phone, I quipped to Mandy, “Let me take off my glasses so I can see to read this.”
Turns out it wasn’t the book publisher’s fault, nor was it the fault of the folks in charge of putting the images on my TV screen. My eyesight was just aging along with the rest of me. At my latest appointment, I was informed that it was time to abandon my “weak prescription” glasses for those with “progressive lenses.”
I picked up my first pair of liberal lenses last week, and I got a 20-minute tutorial from the nice lady at the optometrist office on how to use them. I wondered at first why she was giving me a tutorial. I mean, it’s a pair of glasses. You put them on and look, just like you do every single day. But I quickly learned that’s not how these progressive things work.
It’s taking a little adjustment to get used to these new lenses. “If you want to see far away,” I was told, “use the top portion of the lenses. If you need to see something up close, use the bottom portion.” Sure enough, my tutor was right. If I follow her advice, they work great. But if I reverse the order, things get blurry. It’s all about where I put my gaze.
It’s about the gaze. It’s not just what I’m trying to see, but how I’m attempting to see it. My perspective is important.
Life is kinda like that, isn’t it? Sometimes things get blurry. The print on the page isn’t going to change, and sometimes the situations we face aren’t going to change. When that happens, our perspective needs to change. It may not make the words on the page change, but it helps us see the situation a little differently.
“Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.” (Hebrews 12:1-2)
A lot of things in life can give us blurred vision. Seasons of struggle. Situations involving strife. It could even be our own foolishness and sin that creates a bit of fog in our lives. Regardless of why things get blurry, the remedy is the same: look in the right direction, adjust your gaze, change your perspective. It may not change the season or the situation, but it will change you.
In this season of prayer that our church is experiencing, we’re learning many different things about prayer. I don’t know that there’s a list of 10 major things that prayers do so much as there’s a litany of little things that praying accomplishes. One of the many things that prayer does is change our perspective. It may change the situation. It may not. But one thing prayer will always do is what prayer has always done: it will change you.
As you go through circumstances, be they joyous or lamentable, remember to keep your gaze on the “pioneer and perfecter of our faith.”
One day our faith will become sight, and when it does, nothing about life will be fuzzy or blurry. Until that day, we’re called to walk by faith, not by sight (2 Cor. 5:7). The perfecter of our faith will do just that: he’ll perfect it. Until then, he’ll help us with our perspective.
The View From My Pew 