Seeing through new eyes
Hi all--today is my last doctor appointment from a severe eye injury I sustained eight months ago.
I've had to wrestle with the fact that my vision will never be exactly perfect again. Don't get me wrong. I'm grateful to see at all and my vision is fine, just not exactly as it was before. But the fact today is my last appointment means that there is no more healing likely to come--all healing has happened by now.
Call it a wake-up call or whatever, but this 27-year-old has had to learn mortality, the fact that our bodies don't always cooperate with what we want them to do. So for me, this eye injury is the first realization that our bodies break down and decay, that youth doesn't last forever. Of course, I knew this in my head before, I've done enough funerals--but now I know it in my heart in a new way.
So I struggled with it--what does it mean that my youth is fleeting, is disappearing and will someday be gone?
I decided it was good news.
Because while I've enjoyed my youth, it hasn't been so great that I can't let go of it. God has something greater in mind for each of us than our youth. Our youth is so full of uncertainty, of stubbornness, of anxiety--wouldn't it be terrible if youth was the pinnacle of our existence, like the world keeps insisting it is?
No--to truly live is not to be young nor to have perfect vision. To truly live is to be in Christ--to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are loved by Christ and called to a royal ministry of service to the world (as all Christians are). To truly live is to live a life of grace, nourished by the Word, Table and Presence of God, and to know that this glorious life is but a foretaste of the true life with God in eternity.
And to think some would trade that for a young body and perfect vision. What a blessed hope we Christians have!
I've had to wrestle with the fact that my vision will never be exactly perfect again. Don't get me wrong. I'm grateful to see at all and my vision is fine, just not exactly as it was before. But the fact today is my last appointment means that there is no more healing likely to come--all healing has happened by now.
Call it a wake-up call or whatever, but this 27-year-old has had to learn mortality, the fact that our bodies don't always cooperate with what we want them to do. So for me, this eye injury is the first realization that our bodies break down and decay, that youth doesn't last forever. Of course, I knew this in my head before, I've done enough funerals--but now I know it in my heart in a new way.
So I struggled with it--what does it mean that my youth is fleeting, is disappearing and will someday be gone?
I decided it was good news.
Because while I've enjoyed my youth, it hasn't been so great that I can't let go of it. God has something greater in mind for each of us than our youth. Our youth is so full of uncertainty, of stubbornness, of anxiety--wouldn't it be terrible if youth was the pinnacle of our existence, like the world keeps insisting it is?
No--to truly live is not to be young nor to have perfect vision. To truly live is to be in Christ--to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are loved by Christ and called to a royal ministry of service to the world (as all Christians are). To truly live is to live a life of grace, nourished by the Word, Table and Presence of God, and to know that this glorious life is but a foretaste of the true life with God in eternity.
And to think some would trade that for a young body and perfect vision. What a blessed hope we Christians have!
posted by Rev. Michael Jordan at 10:41 AM
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