Vision and Light

VISION AND LIGHT My Vision has been playing tricks on me, I first noticed it a year or more ago. it is taking me longer to recognise objects, making the connection between what I see and what it actually is - that pathway from vision to recognition is bumpy and slow! I blink and try to be patient, and wait for the message to get to my bouncy, blurry brain. It does eventually get there, most of the time! Just one of the never-ending things that happen with age. My good friend calls it ‘dry rot’! I was lucky enough to receive Lasik surgery on my very short-sighted eyes when I was in my late thirties. After years of wearing contact lenses or thick glasses, could a brief procedure to change the shape of my cornea actually provide precise vision? I sat with my husband in the hotel cafe on the morning of the surgery and he asked me to read the sign that was outside the window in the distance. I read it easily with my glasses on. The next day, after the surgery, I had no trouble reading it with my naked eye. My glasses and contact lenses found the trash very quickly. I was warned that there would come a point in my fifties where I would need help to see when reading, and, yes, as I reached that half century mark, my eyes do cry out for glasses to read! Vision plays tricks in other ways too. I was at a pottery shop with my daughter some time ago and we came across a small ‘thing’ on one of the display shelves. I had to really study it, picking it up, turning it over, and eventually coming to the conclusion that it was a candle holder, the old fashioned kind for a tall slim candle to rest on. My daughter, Jess, came up with a completely different thought for what it was. A sombrero hat …. Hmm My interest was recently sparked for doing jigsaw puzzles, the physical kind, after visiting my sister and seeing the one that her family was working on. A few weeks on, Jess and I are on our 4th one. Usually between 500 and 1,000 pieces. I notice I am much slower in recognising where they go, and I tend to be all over the place, searching for one colour or piece of an object, and then moving on rather too quickly to another area. My brain can be all over the place … My quick, switched on partner works on one section at a time and then joins it to the main part. Without her I would probably have given up or be still on my first puzzle. We can all agree that we see better in the daylight than at night. What about if you are going through a rough, challenging time? - sometimes we may not notice the sunshine and vibrancy of colour in our day-to-day interactions, but we only see shadows and dullness. Yet The light of God’s love is always there, beckoning like the dawn of a new day. There are metaphors used in the Bible to describe Jesus, such as the rock, sun and shield, bread that gives life, the vine and the good shepherd, to name a few. Have you ever heard of Jesus being referred to as the Light? Of course it was a bright shining star that led the shepherds to baby Jesus. 1 John 1:5 says, ‘God is light, in him there is no darkness at all.’ Jesus says of himself, in John 8 :12, ’I am the light that shines through the cosmos; if you walk with Me, you will thrive in the nourishing light that gives life and you will NOT know darkness.’ And the apostle Paul speaks of Jesus in Ephesians 5:13 ’When the light shines, it exposes even the dark and shadowy things and turns them into pure reflections of light’. I am reminded of the open, gentle hand of Jesus inviting us in, to rest and hang out with him, just to BE … all darkness gone, only warmth and glowing love. He welcomes us so warmly and he does not want anything in return, other than our acceptance of Him. I’ll leave you with Psalm 43 verse 3 “Pour into me the brightness of your daybreak! Pour into me your rays of revelation-truth! Let them comfort and gently lead me onto the shining path to you …" Lauren Daigle's song ”https://youtu.be/_cLhaZIBSpo