Double Vision

I was born with an eye problem that caused my eyes to slightly cross whenever I was sick or tired.  At any time, they might not coordinate together causing double vision.  It was hoped that I would outgrow the problem, but it did not work out that way.

I always tried to do well in school, but when I reached high school, I studied very hard hoping to receive a scholarship for college.  In doing so, my eyes just got worse than ever and surgery was all that would help.  So, in my senior year of high school, I had the first of three surgeries on my eyes to try to correct the problem.  The first surgery actually made my eyes worse and I was sent to Emory Hospital for evaluation.  I was told that I could not further my education at that time.  I had already been awarded a full scholarship and had to turn it down.  This was a big disappointment.

Teaching Sunday School several years ago, the situation with my eyes came to mind.  I was studying about God’s goodness and seeing this in our lives.  I realized that my eyesight is limited by my ability to control my eyes and make them work together.  I have “double vision” whenever I see an object with each eye that creates two images displaced from each other.  God began to speak to my heart about seeing with my human eyes but seeing things differently when I see through His eyes.  I have “double vision” when I try to use both. 

When my eyes were at their worst, I learned to discount what I saw with my weak eye concentrating on the image I saw with my strong eye.  I understood what God was showing me in the same way.  We are weakest through our human sight.  Our strength is in our spiritual sight He can give us helping us discount what we see with our weak eyes of the flesh.   Our vision becomes single when we use GOD’s eyes instead of ours to see the GOOD in life.

Reflect: One of the tools used in therapy to treat my eyes was a child’s view master.  You have to focus your eyes together to see one image.  Learning to focus spiritually in life can be treated with the Word.  God desires for us to see life in the blessing of His goodness and to ignore the world’s temptations to draw us away from Him.

Luke 11:34 - The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thy eye is single, thy whole body is also full of light: but when thine eye is evil, thy body is also full of darkness.