New Vision

A friend recently told me about her son's experience with glasses.  He's a bright kid, 13, and he's been wearing glasses for a while now.  But it was quite a trick to get him into them!

His mom thought he might be having trouble with his vision, but whenever he'd get his eyes tested he'd come out with 20/20 vision.  Finally she asked the doctor to give him a chart he hadn't seen before and, you guessed it, his vision problems were revealed.  Turns out he'd been memorizing the eye charts.  Just a brief glance was all it had taken to ace the eye test.

For whatever reason, he hadn't wanted his problem to be exposed.  Maybe it was vanity, maybe it was a need to manage on his own.  At least in part it was fear of the unknown.  But now, with the aid of glasses (actually he wears contacts -- so vanity was definitely in the mix of reasons for resisting!) he can see what he was not able to see before!

How often are we faced with a situation that offers us good, but for any number of reasons we'd rather maintain the status quo than step into the unknown.  How many decisions have you put off, how often have I held back from the next step, because we don't realize how much it will improve our lives?  Even the hard stuff that we don't want to face will usually bring positive results for us.

And if it is true for the daily matters of our lives, how much more for the spiritual matters!  Jesus offers us life to the full (John 10:10) and we are satisfied with life to the medium!  We don't realize the greatness of the gifts He offers us, so we refuse Him.

Maybe it's time to put away the familiar chart that you've memorized, the one that's always gotten you by, and let Him give you a new perspective.  Don't resist Him; don't live satisfied with mediocre. Let Him give you that life to the full.