The big surprise was the first wearing of my new glasses. Everything was sharp and in focus, but when I tried to walk it seemed to me that the ground was tilted to the left.

When I was young, I assumed upon my eyes.  They saw everything correctly and I never gave them a second thought.  One day, when I was about 36 years old I noticed something that looked like thick hairs floating across the page as I read a book.  Concerned, I went to the eye doctor who assured me that the vitreous floaters I was seeing were a normal part of the “aging process”.  With the pride of my youth wounded, I set about accepting “floaters” as part of the altered vision I would have to live with.

Some year’s later, severe pain in my left eye signaled the presence of some terrible problem.  “Shingles” was the diagnosis and I was dismayed to learn that the virus, which caused the pain, was already in my body.  It had been lying dormant in my spinal fluid since my childhood bout with chicken pox.

The pain brought life to a halt and I sought help in the doctors’ office.

A correct diagnosis was critical and the best medicine available had to be ingested and applied.  Then I had to wait and care for my ravaged body until healing was realized.

After I recovered I noted that my left eye was different.  The residual result of the attack of that virus upon my left eye had made it impossible to see clearly without corrective lenses in the form of glasses.  Further more I learned that the weakened condition of that left eye is permanent and it will never return to its original state.  My vision is forever altered.

The big surprise was the first wearing of my new glasses.  Everything was sharp and in focus, but when I tried to walk it seemed to me that the ground was tilted to the left.  I was warned that it would take time for my eyes to adjust to the correction.  “Walk carefully,” they told me.  “…especially on stairs!”

I thought of the affects of sin on our lives and the way it damages and distorts the way we see everything around us.  The correction comes, as the Word of God becomes the filter thought which all of life is evaluated and understood.  At first, His ways seem to be an unnatural walk, “tilted” so to speak.  Care and alert awareness are needed to stay on the path.  With practice and consistency, a “new normal” emerges and His way becomes the obvious choice.

Hear these words of Jesus.

“Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are good, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are bad, your body also is full of darkness.  See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness.  Therefore, if your whole body is full of light, and no part of it dark, it will be completely lighted, as when the light of a lamp shines on you.” (Luke 11:34-36)