Seeing clearly

I try to spend time in the Word before I go to work in the morning. This week I was reading in Mark 8. At the beginning of this chapter is the story of Jesus feeing the thousands with just a few loaves of bread and a couple fish. Only four verses later do the disciples forget to bring food for themselves and Jesus uses the situation as a teaching opportunity, a reminder that God has provided in the past and will do it again.

And they don't get it. In verse 18, Jesus says, "Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear? And do you not remember?"

The following story is Jesus curing a blind man. After the first attempt the man's vision is blurry. Next, verse 25 says, "Then Jesus laid His hands on his eyes again; and He looked intently and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly."

I went out to my car to go to work after reading this story and there was all this condensation on the windows from the cold front that came through during the night. I didn't have anything with me to wipe it off and was running late (of course) so I just turned on the fan and drove slowly through the blurriness until it evaporated from the heat of the Sun.

So that got me thinking about what else I'm not seeing clearly right now. The future seems like what the blind man experienced at first, (or what I see without my glasses or contacts). It's fuzzy, and if I squint enough I can kind of pick things out, but can't really go forward confidently knowing what's ahead.

I was reminded of a verse in one of my favorite chapters, 1Corinithians 13. Verse 12 says, "For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known." In taking to friends lately, we're all waiting for something, be it a job, pregnancy, marriage, community, healing, and as soon as one thing does come about, another desire awakens. But we will never have it all completely revealed on this earth. And it is only when we look intently back at Jesus, asking Him to give us sight, that we can hope to have any clarity in this confusing and broken world.

I often talk to my kids about how science is a part of everything we do and experience, and as we learn more about why the world works as it does, we will view it more and more through science glasses.

I need to go through everyday wearing God glasses, viewing everything as He does.

Making a change

I've been thinking on and off the last couple months about making changes. It started when I got my car washed on New Year's Eve. This is something I usually do only when I get an oil change, but after driving to and from Nebraska, the car needed it BIG time. So I had it cleaned inside and out. Everytime I do this, I'm always so happy with how my car looks (it's black again!) and ask myself, "Why did I let this go so long?" and committ to not letting it get so bad next time.

You don't want to see what she looks like right now.

A week or so after New Years I decided to finally get internet at home, but first gave my computer an upgrade by adding more memory because it'd been running pretty slow for the last 6 months. My friend (whose husband installed it for me) told me that my computer went from Payless to Prada as a result and she was right. I was amazed at well it worked! I had gotten so used to it being slower and slower that I didn't really think about trying to make it faster; that was just the way things were and I would deal with it.

A friend of mine is struggling through some marriage problems and one of the things that's come up every time we talk about it is just how long it's going to take to make everything right again between them. They're committed to working things out but are realizing that it's not going to happen overnight because the problems they have didn't come about that way either.

I was listening to a podcast last night about change and the example was used with weight gain and loss that was so true of my experience. I didn't put on an extra 85 pounds in a couple months; it happened gradually over a few years, and then when I did lose it, it was a few pounds at a time over the course of another year. And it wasn't until I looked back at pictures of myself from my heaviest time and compare that to now that I realized how much I let myself go, but it happened so subtlely at the time.

This week especially my community helped me recognize that I was slowing slipping down a new slide of dangerous thoughts and actions. It's been their accountability and the Word that's kept me from from letting my heart go like I have to my car, computer, body in the past.

Colossians 3:16 "Let the Word of God dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom..."