Looking Through Scratched Up Lenses

Scratched up lenses!

Scratched up sunglasses!

I can't stand them! I know I should be and I really am thankful for sunglasses period...but when they get scratched it just gets on my last nerve!! And why is it that when that one first scratch appears it's right in the place where my eyeball lines up to the lense?!!! So aggravating!

I just got a new pair of sunglasses a few months ago...they were free!!! I think that's why I love them so much...Well and maybe because they are neon blue and green and have Geico written on the side AND a little gecko on the right corner of the lense. Yes, I may be crazy but they are mine and I got them free at the NC fair this year for singing karaoke with my girls... Yep, best part of the fair for me this year... we all three got a pair and if you didn't make it to the Geico truck you totally missed out!!!

But you know the best part about these shades? They are totally scratch free!!! So far, so good!! I'm doing my best to keep them that way. I love a great challenge...and believe me, keeping my glasses, whether they be these new readers I just recently began wearing or my little blue "Geico's", it's a great challenge!!

While I was in Kenya a couple months ago, I was sitting by the animal's watering hole wearing my awesome "Geico's" and began to think...I began to talk to God and I felt him begin to talk to me about seeing through scratched up lenses...Well, that was when it hit me...I realized that morning that I loved my "Geico's" so much because they were totally scratchless. I began to think how we so often keep wearing and looking through glasses that have become dirty and scratched, totally messing up the way we see things...keeping us from seeing things clearly...our vision is distorted and skewed.

Then I began to think about how sometimes we do that when we're not even wearing glasses..The "lenses of our lives" become scratched up and dirty over the years...Life somehow will throw stuff at us, unavoidable stuff, that scratches our shades...mud gets slung sometimes and some of it gets stuck to our lenses...We continue through life seeing things different, with our vision distorted, skewed, possibly blurred even. It happens. It happened to me and it's probably happened to you at some point or another...

Divorce caused a few big scratches on my so called lenses of life...distrust, fear of betrayal, bitterness, anger...
My own bad choices that later resulted from the previous scratches caused even more scratches to my lenses of life...shame, even more fear and distrust-of my own self, pain, even more anger...

I guess maybe you have some of your own...some similar...some different...loss of a loved one, loss of a job, drug addiction, etc...

So what do we do with the old shades? The old scratched up lenses??

I like to think that my God is the best lasik surgeon ever!!!! And he has unlimited free brand new sunglasses and we don't even have to sing karaoke to earn them!! How good is that?!

I had lasik surgery about 13 years ago... Coolest thing ever! No really, I sat down in the chair and 15minutes later I looked up at the clock on the wall across the room and could see perfectly what time it was! I was shocked! I mean, I had faith that the procedure was a good one, but I had no idea just how good it was. Isn't that like God sometime? We trust the procedure of him fixing our lives, but we just don't realize how good it is until we see clearly again.

So, I guess today and during this Christmas and New Year season, take time to allow God to do what he does best. Sit down in the chair and let him do the delicate surgery of fixing the way we see. I wish I could say it would be done in 15minutes, but I'm thinking it will be something he does carefully and slowly as to bring total clarity to our lives little by little. Take the shades off that may have become scratched up through the things of this life and let him give us a new pair. He will help us to stop judging others and this world  based upon our experiences and begin to see others and the things of this world through his lenses. Take his truth and paste it across our eyes and let everything we see pass through it first. Little by little, I believe we can see more clearly and judge less severely...

As we do this great exchange, give him our scratched up lenses and let him change the way we see, I pray he will be seen in us. Because we begin seeing through his lenses of grace and mercy we help others in the great exchange also. And one day, one day, instead of looking through a glass darkly we will see clearly and we will see him face to face, eye to eye... oh what a day that will be...when my Jesus I will see, and I look upon his face, the one who saved me by his grace...what a day that will be!

Because of Jesus,
Lenee