I had my annual appointment with my eye doctor recently. My vision has never been the strongest, and admittedly, my eyesight weakens with each passing year. I rely on glasses or contacts while driving or while attending important events, but otherwise, I normally do not utilize my corrective lenses.
Puzzled, my eye doctor inquired as to why I don’t wear them around my house or when I walk around a familiar store, as they would help me tremendously. I had to sheepishly confess that I have grown comfortable with blurry vision. I have become accustomed to indistinctly viewing the world around me. I am not proud of this fact, for the reality is there are details I miss due to my resistance to wear my contacts or glasses more frequently.
We humans are stubborn creatures of comfort.
Comfort provides us with a temporary sense of ease and security, but we often forfeit God’s best when we settle for it. It could be a relationship with someone with whom we are not equally yoked, a dead-end job that we have been nervous about leaving, or repetitive cycles, behaviors, and patterns that bear no fruit.
Comfort often serves as a shield against discomfort and challenges. Pursuing God’s best is not without struggles, and there are many seasons of life when sacrifice, perseverance, and growth seem exhausting to attain.
I don’t wear my glasses or contacts because I often want to avoid the reality of what clear vision will bring to the surface. Although we maintain a clean home, my correct lenses allow me to see every speck of dust, every dog hair, every crumb, and every detail that stay hidden in the obscurity of my poor vision.
I prefer what I perceive in the haze.
“No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” (Hebrews 12:11.)
Discipline may feel uncomfortable or overwhelming initially, but it eventually produces that which is glorious and magnificent. And while I may not appreciate every detail that clear vision reveals, it provides me with authority over my surroundings.
In the Ephesians 3, the Apostle Paul wrote, “And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” (vs. 17-21.)
Christ’s love is boundless and all-encompassing.
God’s capabilities exceed human imagination; He can bring about outcomes beyond what we can conceive.
Just as my eye doctor does not want me to struggle through life when corrective lenses are available to help me, our Savior, who loves so deeply and intimately, does not want His children to stumble in the darkness.
“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” – C.S. Lewis