New Eyes

My friend David Joe recently had some major eye surgery.  Before his surgeries, his eyesight was bad enough that he took away his own driving privileges.  Post surgery, he has been amazed at the things he has been missing, even though his vision has not fully adjusted.  The problem is his brain.  The doctor fixed his vision so that his eyes themselves see perfectly now.  But his brain has been trained over the last few decades or more to see things with not so perfect eyes.  It is receiving perfect signal now, but doesn't know what to do with it.  It has to reprogram itself.

The human body totally amazes me--that it can reprogram itself; that it can heal itself.  Even more, most of the time it will do this all on its own as long as we stay out of the way.  We may need a doc or a mom to do some repair and put things in order, but the rest of the process is automatic.

Now, that is not to say that we don't get in the way of the healing that our bodies can do.  We can be unwilling to change our diets to heal our fatness and all the bad things that come along with that.  We can be unwilling to admit that there are issues with things, like our sight, and allow broken things to perpetuate into even worse problems.

I think that is the problem with our spiritual lives.  If we were to be faithful and chase after God, living our lives for him in the way that he has called us live, everything else will heal itself.  Now, I understand that as we talk about our spiritual lives and the things we do, there is more than just ourselves involved.  Our living and spiritual lives also involve those around us, from our spouses, family, friends, co-workers and so on and so on.  I think that is why it is so hard when God steps in and makes all the perfect repairs.  Our living needs to reprogram itself.  And that is challenged by us and those around us. 

This is why it is so important for the church to be the Kingdom of God.  If we are being what God has called us to be, then we are creating a place where people can come to heal from life in the world and learn about life in the Kingdom.