Clearing Our Blurry Vision

By Jessica Brodie

Have you ever gone from seeing something extremely blurry to something clear?

I’ve needed glasses or contact lenses since I was about 13 years old. Every year, I have to go to the eye doctor, take out my contact lenses, and then peer at a bunch of letters on the wall, trying to decipher what they say. Everything is out of focus and blurry, like I’m trying to read a book underwater.

But soon as I put in the lenses, I can see again! Everything foggy, blurry, and hazy suddenly becomes clear and sharp, the edges defined and clean.

It reminds me of my life before and after I became a genuine follower of Jesus. Before, I looked at the world in a different way… unfocused, askew, misaligned. My perspective was lopsided, and a lot of times it felt like I was wandering, lost in the world without a real sense of which direction was the right one.

With Jesus, everything came sharply into focus. I gained a new perspective on life, with clear vision and sharp focus. It’s like I had just opened my eyes with the most perfect corrective lenses possible.

Can you relate? Have you gone through times when you walked astray, veering off God’s path? Didn’t it seem like life seemed blurry somehow, as if your vision was off?

But Jesus changes everything. He turns the world from blurry to just right. He’s the shepherd who knows the way, the One who leads us onto the perfect path of peace. Whether we’ve never been on that path before, or whether we’re finding our footing again, it doesn’t matter—what matters is that we’re walking with the Lord in righteousness.

In the Gospel of John, we’re told about a man who had been blind from birth. He didn’t know a thing about Jesus, but when Jesus healed him, giving him sight for the first time ever, the man was overjoyed. The religious leaders were upset about this, as the man had been healed in violation of certain religious laws regarding not working on the Sabbath, and they had all sorts of questions about how and why this happened—was Jesus a sinner because he broke the Sabbath? Was he truly from God?

But the healed man didn’t understand why this mattered. As Scripture told us he replied, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!” (John 9:25 NIV).

It reminds me of John Newton’s hymn “Amazing Grace,” which proclaims, “I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see.”

Isn’t that the truth for us today? How our healing came about—physical, emotional, spiritual—doesn’t matter nearly as much as the change we experience.

Like the man, the details pale in comparison to the wild transformation. Imagine going from blind to being able to see the world around you—the sunrise, the majestic mountains, the faces of those you love. Wouldn’t that joy overwhelm your senses and make you feel like jumping, singing, dancing… or just falling to your knees in praise and gratitude? I imagine that man felt that joy and gratitude for the rest of his days. His regained sight, of course, was temporary. Eventually, we know, his body wore out as happens to all of us, and at the end of his days, he closed his eyes once more and passed on. But the true healing Jesus offers is far different. For in healing this man’s sight, he gained a disciple—and the man gained far more than his sight but his salvation.

Before Jesus, we’re all blind, all lost. But through Jesus, we have sight, direction. We have salvation. We are healed not only from physical infirmity and affliction but from all the sins we’ve ever committed… forever.

Today, I pray you join me in gratitude for the true, eternal healing Jesus brings us all.