Blurred vision comes from being distracted
The apostle Paul understood this teaching of Jesus quite well. In his second letter to Timothy, he wrote, Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier. And if a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully (2 Timothy 4:4-5), he is comparing the Christian life to the life of a soldier. A soldier trains for the battle to the extent that reactions to threats become nearly second nature. Soldiers are trained to set aside everything else mentally with the exception of the task at hand. When a soldier becomes distracted with other things than the task at hand, it can be disastrous for both him and those in his unit that depend on him. Go ask any war veteran about the men in his unit that died on the battlefields, in the air, or on a ship that had become distracted and weren’t able to focus on the immediate goal.
For a Christian to become distracted from the battle can have eternal consequences. We can easily get blurred vision when we focus in on things that have no eternal value. Within my own life, I freely admit there have been times where I have not focused on the things that mattered but focused on stuff that appealed to my fleshly nature. For me, those pursuits were that I sought advanced college degrees, that somehow attaining a terminal degree – a Ph.D. was what would define me as a success. From my perspective it would prove my abilities, it would show how smart I was, and would earn me respect. The problem is that once I became a born-again believer in Jesus Christ, my perspective changed. It was no longer about earning and winning the approval of man, but hearing, Well done, good and faithful servant… (Matthew 25:23b) from my Lord, Savior, and King – Jesus. For the first time in my life, I realized that it isn’t about what other people think about me, but about what Jesus thinks that matters.
It is also easy to become distracted when others around us don’t understand what the Lord has laid upon our hearts. For me, since November of 2011 I struggled with what I felt the Lord was calling me to do. When I turned to other Christians for advice, many of them simply told me that I was wrong, the Lord would never lead me into that direction because I have been divorced. Instead of taking it to the Lord and allowing Him to direct my paths, my vision was clouded. Instead of stepping out in faith, I simply stayed put and did everything I knew to do – in my own power – to respond to the Lord’s call in the safety of the opinions of others. As I’ve previously shared, in October of 2015, the Lord used a good friend of the family to not only confront me, but through love, to guide me to simply allow the Lord to do His work through me.
When we become distracted by the circumstances around us our vision becomes obscured. We cannot see clearly, we cannot understand what is happening around us, and we can even begin to doubt that the Lord can use us. Our obscured vision may convince us we are no longer in a place to stay effective where the Lord has called us to serve Him. It is at these times we need to simply call out to the Lord and allow Him to restore our vision.
Blurred vision can affect our outlook on life
For the past four months, as I have gotten serious about my health, I have managed to lose some weight. I have also been experiencing lower blood-glucose readings as I have changed my diet in trying to better control my diabetes. Since the end of February, I have been completely taken off my mealtime insulin, have had my Lantus lowered, and as I continue to lose weight, will see improvements in my overall health. About a month ago, I’ve had to use my bifocals more than normal and have even experienced some vision problems. If you’ve ever experienced obscured vision, you know that it affected every aspect of life – reading, driving, cooking, even shaving can become a challenge. When our spiritual vision becomes blurred, the things within our relationship with Jesus can become affected: our prayer life, personal evangelism efforts, and Bible study can become difficult. Just as we go to an eye specialist, an ophthalmologist, to help us with our eyes when we have obscured vision, we have to learn, to trust by faith, upon Jesus and His will for us. We have to willingly give Him everything that has distracted us, regardless of what it is, so that he will clear our vision. We simply have to learn to let go of what holds us back and to completely place our complete trust in Him.
(1) As a side note, Jesus tells the man, let the dead bury their dead, and in the time Jesus walked the Earth, it was traditional in the Mediterranean world for the family to gather around a loved one who was believed to be dying until they passed. In the case of this man, it could be that he was actually telling Jesus he couldn’t follow Him until after his father’s death and funeral. In other words, he was using his family to say that he couldn’t immediately follow Jesus.
