Preserved By Purpose: Living Above “See” Level

A number of  years ago, I had one of my most challenging experiences with my natural vision.   

What started out as a normal day for me ended with me having a splitting headache and blurred vision. I thought I might have had my contact lenses in the wrong eyes because my vision was a little blurry, so I switched them. But my vision seemed to get worse as the day progressed, so I switched them back.

Over the next three days I did all that I could to clean them but there didn’t seem to be a strong enough solution to remove what looked like a cloudy layer on the lenses.  I reluctantly made an appointment with the eye doctor dreading having to buy another pair of contact lenses. I prayed for God to supernaturally heal my eyes on the way to the doctor’s office, but God obviously had a more important lesson for me.

When I went to the eye doctor, he was able to clean the lenses and remove most of what had clouded them. He stated that part of my physical discomfort was the fact that I was right eye dominant and it was my right eye’s contact lenses that was the most blurred. The weaker left eye was trying to overcompensate for the temporary weakness of the right one.   

He further explained that his great “top-secret” solution that cleansed my contact lens included baking soda. He carefully explained all that he did and recommended that I do the same thing to clean my contact lenses in the future. It was amazing how something as simple as baking soda seemed to be the solution to everything!

Later that day, I did what he said and marveled at the quick improvement to my eyesight.  It was still a little fuzzy, but my headache was gone. I thought: How interesting that even though it was the weakest, my left eye was overcompensating for the temporary weakness of the stronger right eye.  

I also thought how that fight between my eyes to give me clear vision was similar to our battles with faith. We don’t have enough faith that God will do something, and we overcompensate by taking matters into our own hands. We think we are doing the right thing, but in the end, we cause an imbalance of faith. We say we have limitless faith but our actions show that we actually have limited faith. Sometimes we also make the mistake of putting our faith in the wrong people or things, all because we want to control the situation. 

There are so many things that we  are seeing right now on the news and on social media that are disturbing and discouraging.  This includes cell phone video of people being captured/kidnapped and ultimately deported to shocking murders of American citizens being widely shared in a constant barrage of horrifying and unimaginable cruelty. For many, it’s overwhelming. For others, they champion the images saying this is what they wanted to happen.  

The point is that we have to believe that there is a more compassionate world than the one we are seeing. 

2 Corinthians 4:18 says:

Faith, like that dirty contact lens, is what we see the world through. If our faith is blurred, cloudy, distorted, or obscured, we make poor decisions because we have poor sight and insight. Like that damaged lens, we have to admit that our faith was shaken and replace our faithless eyes with the faithful eyes of God.    

Shewanda Riley is the author of “Love Hangover: Moving from Pain to Purpose After a Relationship Ends” and “Writing to the Beat of God’s Heart: A Book of Prayers for Writers.” Email her at preservedbypurpose@gmail.com or follow her on Instagram @shewandawrites.