I See Men as Trees

I am facing cataract surgery in August and the whole process of aging (a more palatable form of describing the process of slowly dying or decaying) brings fresh perspectives into this interesting time of life.  Cataracts are probably different for each person who experiences them, but for me I see men as trees walking.  Everything is blurry all of the time, and nothing I do can improve the focus.  The light simply enters into my eyeball lenses where it is diffracted all to hell and never quite hits the back of the eyeball on target, or at least all of the light does not hit the same place at the same time.  I am starting to better appreciate my physics about not really seeing something but rather seeing the light reflected from that something.  In my case I lack the properly calibrated equipment to collect and focus that light, hence blurry has become my way of life.

Now as you age, you learn to live with things, things like joint pain, difficulty in sleeping, having to fight against gravity, loss of muscle tone, and more of all that.  I used to think that you could get use to most anything, that over time what is abnormal would become normalized, you just learn to live with it.  But constant blurriness is difficult to live with.  Oh, I've adapted to it, I can drive but not read highway signs until they are right in front of me, I can still read books and papers but may have to adjust the lighting, computer screens are now my nemesis with their own light source but somehow I get by typing...you get the picture.  But I don't like it, it's more than a nuisance, it affects everything that fills every day and gives me a headache by the end of the day.  I can't get used to it, never will.

And somehow I thought there might be a parable in all of this because as I have aged, my spiritual vision has likewise gotten blurry.  I thought it would sharpen with time, but I find that I no longer see those clear, crisp lines between black and white, I see a lot of grey.  My eagle-eyed vision that used to catch every jot and tittle and nuance now seems content to just try to take in the big picture and make some sense of that at least.  I know that some would use words like "lukewarm" or "left your first love" or "compromise" to describe my condition.  But I don't think that's a fair assessment.  What cataracts have done for me is make me appreciate the miracle of sight and become really fearful of what my condition might be if I ever lost it.  And I thought that was probably true for me spiritually as well.  I need another touch of Jesus' hand; seeing men as trees walking may be better than darkness all of the time, but for one that was used to seeing clearly it is a step down.  But here's the hard part to put into words.  I don't want to return to the way I used to see things around me, I want to see the light reflected from all of those things, to believe again that the world was created good, that man is redeemable and life has direction and purpose, that God has not abandoned us to futility, that the gospel is still good news, and that in the end of all things in His light we will see light (Psalm 36:9).