May 2021

OPENING EYES AND UNLOCKING MINDS

My fifth-grade teacher sent me to get my eyes examined; I needed glasses. It’s impossible to forget the first time I stared through those new lenses. Trees held individual leaves and letters on street signs were no longer blurred.

The electricity of wonder lit up my brain with an intoxicating euphoria.

“You need to try these,” I insisted.

“I don’t need glasses,” my friend responded.

“No, I don’t think you understand. These aren’t some old man’s glasses; they’re like superman’s glasses.”

“Uhmmm…superman isn’t real.”

“Like, I’ve never seen anything like this! You’ve gotta try these!”

“Okay, let me see.”

My spellbinding spectacles would transform me into the most popular kid ever. They would line up to catch a glimpse of the world through my fascinating frames.

He slid the bridge over his nose, screwed up his face, and immediately complained: “How can you see through these? Man, your eyes must be really bad!”

“Bad? Bad?” I felt offended. “Your eyes must be bad if you can’t see how awesome my new glasses are.”

“I didn’t say your glasses were bad; it’s just that people who need strong lenses like these, usually have bad eyesight.”

A lightning bolt illuminated my mind: without those lenses, I could hardly see. Until that moment, I couldn’t see how much I couldn’t see. Life had always been a blur, but when I started wearing eyeglasses, my world changed. Words on the board shifted into shapes I could see from my desk without squinting, and I no longer had to sit on the front row.

Having poor vision meant I struggled to read fluently, I had a hard time focusing on my schoolwork, and I lacked confidence; I couldn’t keep up. In a very real sense, “where there is no vision, people perish” (Proverbs 29:18). But now that I had acquired the superpowers of 20/20 vision, nothing could hold me back.

Living in darkness helped me appreciate the light.

When we taught high school students, René and I focused on one thing: opening eyes and unlocking minds. We desired students to put on new glasses that would enable them to reframe their stories, to look at their disappointments as divine appointments, to shift their entire perspective and experience from the transient to the eternal.

One of the best examples I can think of is Saul of Tarsus who, struck blind by “a light from heaven” (Acts 9:3), struggled for “three days without sight” (Acts 9:9). Saul was made physically blind so that he might see. For the longest time, he had stubbornly resisted the light shining into his mind, arousing his conscience, condemning his soul, and filling him with bitterness. The more he lashed out, the darker his vision grew, until that day on the road to Damascus, “still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord,” his compassionate Saviour blinded the proud Pharisee with heavenly illumination. Three days of darkness delivered a divine appointment, a time of deep introspection and growth. Saul cast himself completely helpless and hopeless upon the only one who could release him from his prison house of guilt, giving him a new name: Paul the Apostle. Jesus, in His tender mercy, sent Ananias to lay his hands upon him and pray for Paul to receive his sight.

Equipped with supernatural farsightedness, Paul fixed his vision on “one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead” (Philippians 3:13). The “dung” of his past (Philippians 3:8) no longer clouded his vision, for Christ had set him free.

For some of us, our vision appears cloudy, and we feel blinded by something from our past. If this experience is yours, a friend’s, or family member’s, René and I would like to join you in petitioning the throne of grace.

If you or your loved ones are struggling to reframe your disappointments as divine appointments, to see what lies ahead, to be released from haunting regrets, please, send us your personal prayer requests, and we will join our prayers with yours.

~ Mike Lemon