What Do You See?

Recently, I went through my annual vision checkup and found out I may need a little help seeing far down the road. You know, read the exit signs before they arrive kind of vision assistance! I’ve used reading glasses for nearly 20 years, and one doctor explained it so well, eventually, we all have problems using the muscles around our eyes to help focus the eye. Some need close-in assistance sooner because the muscles just don’t work as well.

For the close in work, I generally have two prescriptions – one up close for book reading, and one for about a yard away to work on my various screen needs. Since I detest multiple vision glasses (bi-focal, etc.), I use several different pair of glasses for my reading needs. +175’s for the screens, and +300’s for reading up close.

Now. I call them my “throw-down” glasses to reference those cheap over the counter glasses to fill in the gap when my prescriptive lenses are lost, broken, or simply uncomfortable. I’m not sure that the same thing will apply for distance!

How will I live with a third pair of glasses? My doctor has helped me through this dilemma by giving me some options to think through!

This and some reading I’ve been doing got me to thinking about what we can, and can not, see with the vision ability we have. When taking medical checkups for my piloting days, the doctor had tools of the trade to test if my hearing and vision were working satisfactorily, but it’s my vision doctor that really comprehends what’s going on. Thanks, Dr. Rick Baxter!

With tools of the trade, some as old as the hills, and some modern marvels of medical possibilities, I know these kinds of questions are answered and recorded in my chart so they can easily be compared from year to year.

How clear is our vision?
What’s our depth of field? Peripheral? What’s our field of view?
What does the retinal (muscle, nerve, etc.) look like?
Cataracts? Other anomalies?
What’s the general health of everything that revolves around our vision?

This brings me to my thought today. It’s appropriate on so many levels! What is the general health of your vision? How well can you see?

When we have no reference, then it’s often our imagination that supplies the details of the missing gap of ability. However, our imagination is based on something, right?

What do your mental imaginative abilities say about you?
What do you see? Can you fill in the missing pieces?
What can you see?

This is why I’ve enjoyed Historical and Science fiction for most of my life. Someone imagines the missing and fills in with their own speculative imagination! What they see and write about may be based on fact, but they put it out there as if it were something they eyewitnessed themselves!

James Michener, Alexander Thom, Isaac Asimov, Louis L’Amour… each of these writers had a great imagination! Perhaps it’s the power to “fill in the blanks” that intrigues me the most. How can someone see what no one else sees?

Some have horrible nightmares of the “gotcha’s” that appear just outside of the visual spectrum. Others see only good things. Some have faith in the positive, others see only negative.

Maybe I’m a little too old fashioned for this, but other than a few recurring nightmares of my own doing, I want to see the positive and not the negative. It’s not the glass half-full or empty, rather, I have water!

The writer of Hebrews describes having a positive outlook on life, even when bad things happen. Go read all of Hebrews 11, often called the Faith Chapter, but I like to think of it as the “Faith in Action” chapter! How does it start off?

Now faith is the substance [assurance] of things hoped for,
the evidence of things not seen.
(Hebrews 11:1 NKJV)

Faith. Maybe this is what’s missing in so much of what we see. We constantly see the negative experiences around us, and it haunts our vision. Before long, all we envision is reflective of what we see happening every day. Cancer, racism, war, mass shootings, negativity, demonstrations, taxes, politics, finance issues…

Most of this happens when we think short term. As in, what happens to me is more important than what happens to our global experience. “I can’t stand it…” (You have to understand the reference, but click on the link and tell me what you think!)

Back in the Faith Chapter, the writer takes a huge leap and points out the vision of all those he wrote about.

These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
(Hebrews 11:13 NKJV)

Then he goes through a history lesson showing all the challenges faced by key figures throughout Israel’s past. Abraham. Isaac. Jacob and Esau. Joseph. Moses. Rahab. Gideon. Barak. Samson. Jephthah. David. Samuel…prophets, and many other unnamed players…

He resolves that they lived their lives, filling in the blanks of the future, using their faith to subdue kingdoms, work righteousness, obtaining the promises, stopping the mouths of lions and all other works that were done against them.

Faith in action, even when times were unimaginatively harsh.

I suspect too many of us live in the moment wearing our feelings as gloves on each hand. Fear and anguish. Doubt and confusion. Envy and strife. Anxiety and despair.

How about writing a different version of your story! Let’s put Faith into action and let our mind and spirit fill in the missing gaps of what the future holds in store. Yes. The moment may be bad, but it’s temporary. Even when we have a good testimony (Hebrews 11:39), we do not have a better tomorrow until we arrive there!

Let’s change our vision perspective. It’s not about the bad that’s happening, rather, in my book, it’s about that glorious future!