Todays blog post is written by my wife Stacy:
I need glasses. Without my glasses, I cannot do simple, daily tasks such as driving and working on a computer.
I don’t have terrible vision, though. In fact, sometimes I forget that I need glasses. When I walk around in the darkness of morning, I can see well enough to avoid obstacles. And I get up and get ready without noticing anything amiss. It all comes back, though, when I walk out into a larger space that is well lit and I realize that I forgot my glasses…again. In fact, I forgot that I need glasses…again.
John Eldredge wrote something in an email devotional this week that made me think of this lingering problem of mine—it’s a quote from his book THE JOURNEY OF DESIRE:
Something awful has happened, something terrible. Something worse, even, than the fall of man. For in that greatest of all tragedies, we merely lost Paradise — and with it, everything that made life worth living. What has happened since is unthinkable: we’ve gotten used to it. We’re broken in to the idea that this is just the way things are. The people who walk in great darkness have adjusted their eyes.
When we forget that the world we live in is shrouded in darkness, we get used to the darkness. We accept darkness as normal. Only by looking to the light—Jesus—do we remember that our vision is not so great.
Themes of light and darkness are all throughout the Bible—not just in the life of Jesus. But Jesus talks about it a lot. And He talks about seeing clearly.
In John 8:12, Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
So much of following Jesus can be summed up in one word: INTENTIONALITY. We have to daily look to Jesus and see our lives with the light that only He gives if we want to remember and be aware that we are surrounded by darkness. We have to ask for Him to be the light in our surroundings or else our eyes will adjust to the darkness and we’ll just get used to it.
Jesus, we recognize that You are the light of the world. Help us to remember to look to You every day—more and more—so that You can illuminate our lives and show us the places that You are at work, the places You want us to go, the people You want us to see, and the things You want us to do. Amen.
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