This is cross-posted from my Life Journal blog.
Thanksliving is Thanksgiving!
"Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongues of the dumb shall cease." (Isaiah 35:5-6)
I am *SO* thankful for my eyes and for my eyesight AND for my "vision". Do those sound interchangeable? I don't think they are!! I have a lifelong problem with my "visual acuity" as the eye doctors call it. What is that? Acuity refers to the focus, sharpness, and clarity with which I see the things I look at. When I was a baby, I had what they call "lazy eye" in my left eye, and that can cause double vision. In my case, it was much worse when I was tired and trying to focus or control the wandering eye was just too much for me. It became really noticeable to my mother when I was about two years old and people started to notice that I closed my left eye to read or to see things up close. I started wearing "coke bottles in frames" when I was four, and I was prescribed a patch for that left eye, to be worn for three hours at a time three times a day. My MOTHER felt sorry for me and SHE felt self-conscious about having a child with something less than perfect vision, so she didn't make me wear it. Her brother, my uncle, was an eye surgeon, and he evaluated me for the possibility of surgery to correct the wandering, and determined I was not really a good candidate, so I had no corrective surgery. Life has been one long struggle with dealing with correcting the visual "acuity" and I get really weary of it all.
But wait!! Weary is one thing - frightened is another, and every TIME my vision blurs (as it frequently does due to fatigue and/or blood sugar issues), I all but panic! Am I going blind? Is this what it's like to go blind? Has the Diabetes finally gotten my ability to see? All of these are horrible possibilities to me . . . I depend on my eyes for so much - photography, playing the piano, reading, seeing my cat and my husband and my beautiful daughter - her new puppy, maybe a grandchild down the road - the changes of the seasons - seashells on the beach - SNOW (gosh, but I love snow) - birds (how would I participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count every year if I couldn't see?) - Christmas with its lights, the music to play, my diamond ring as it sparkles in the tree lights - candles (how would I know which Advent candle to light or which ones were burning at a given time)? How could I drive to see Wendy? What about sunrises and sunsets? Mist in the mountain valleys on the Blue Ridge Parkway??? I'm not going to belabor the list. You have your own, and I could go on and on and on!
The Scripture passage I quoted above (from Isaiah 35) is one that has always had special meaning for me. Handel, in his great oratorio Messiah. wrote a "Recitative" for Alto on this passage, and I have sung it several times, along with the Aria that follows it ("He Shall Feed His Flock") both in church and in a south Atlanta community chorus. It is my understanding that the prophet Isaiah speaks of "Then" to mean "after the coming of Christ") and something about me doesn't want to wait until "then". I want my eyes open NOW. I want to see NOW. I want vision NOW. Patience isn't my long suit!! I don't want, speaking metaphorically, to die before I live. I don't want to be blind before I've seen what I can see.
I thought this was interesting:
I asked Google the question: "How many times is the word Eye mentioned in the Bible?"
THIS is what I found:
EYE
Seems pretty clear to me that, at least scripturally speaking, we're supposed to be doing a lot of "looking and seeing"!! I can't help but wonder how often I "look" without "seeing" - how often I "listen" without "hearing" - how often my "vision" isn't sharp or accurate (vision, for me, having to do with what I conclude and assume based on what I see and hear, if that makes any sense?) I can pray only that I will learn to live in ways that lead me beyond just looking to seeing - beyond just listening to hearing - and to a clear vision of who I am and what I'm supposed to be doing with my life. I pray daily that I will never go back to a time when I can "look" at a person of another race or faith or economic status and not "see" that person's human-ness and/or how much LIKE me he/she is. I pray that I will never go back to a time when I can "listen" to notes without "hearing" meaning in melody. I think you probably catch my drift here :) I hope so!
As I told my Facebook friends a few minutes ago . . . Today's expression of gratitude is for my eyes and my vision. I am profoundly thankful for those times when I do, INDEED, see what there is to be seen in this world . . . beauty, nature, smiles, etc., and I am thankful, as well, for the tears that sometimes come to wash my eyes "clean"
Hope you're living today in a spirit of "Thanksliving" for in so doing, I believe you (and I) are living "Thanksgiving"!!!
I am *SO* thankful for my eyes and for my eyesight AND for my "vision". Do those sound interchangeable? I don't think they are!! I have a lifelong problem with my "visual acuity" as the eye doctors call it. What is that? Acuity refers to the focus, sharpness, and clarity with which I see the things I look at. When I was a baby, I had what they call "lazy eye" in my left eye, and that can cause double vision. In my case, it was much worse when I was tired and trying to focus or control the wandering eye was just too much for me. It became really noticeable to my mother when I was about two years old and people started to notice that I closed my left eye to read or to see things up close. I started wearing "coke bottles in frames" when I was four, and I was prescribed a patch for that left eye, to be worn for three hours at a time three times a day. My MOTHER felt sorry for me and SHE felt self-conscious about having a child with something less than perfect vision, so she didn't make me wear it. Her brother, my uncle, was an eye surgeon, and he evaluated me for the possibility of surgery to correct the wandering, and determined I was not really a good candidate, so I had no corrective surgery. Life has been one long struggle with dealing with correcting the visual "acuity" and I get really weary of it all.
But wait!! Weary is one thing - frightened is another, and every TIME my vision blurs (as it frequently does due to fatigue and/or blood sugar issues), I all but panic! Am I going blind? Is this what it's like to go blind? Has the Diabetes finally gotten my ability to see? All of these are horrible possibilities to me . . . I depend on my eyes for so much - photography, playing the piano, reading, seeing my cat and my husband and my beautiful daughter - her new puppy, maybe a grandchild down the road - the changes of the seasons - seashells on the beach - SNOW (gosh, but I love snow) - birds (how would I participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count every year if I couldn't see?) - Christmas with its lights, the music to play, my diamond ring as it sparkles in the tree lights - candles (how would I know which Advent candle to light or which ones were burning at a given time)? How could I drive to see Wendy
The Scripture passage I quoted above (from Isaiah 35) is one that has always had special meaning for me. Handel, in his great oratorio Messiah. wrote a "Recitative" for Alto on this passage, and I have sung it several times, along with the Aria that follows it ("He Shall Feed His Flock") both in church and in a south Atlanta community chorus. It is my understanding that the prophet Isaiah speaks of "Then" to mean "after the coming of Christ") and something about me doesn't want to wait until "then". I want my eyes open NOW. I want to see NOW. I want vision NOW. Patience isn't my long suit!! I don't want, speaking metaphorically, to die before I live. I don't want to be blind before I've seen what I can see.
I thought this was interesting:
THIS is what I found:
EYE
- The word eyes is mentioned 502 times
- The word eye is mentioned 115 times
- The word eyelid is mentioned 9 times
- The word eyed is mentioned 2 times
- The word eyeservice is mentioned 2 times
- The word eyewitnesses is mentioned 2 times
- The word eye's is mentioned 1 time
- The word eyebrows is mentioned 1 time
- The word eyesalve is mentioned 1 time
- The word eyesight is mentioned 1 time
Seems pretty clear to me that, at least scripturally speaking, we're supposed to be doing a lot of "looking and seeing"!! I can't help but wonder how often I "look" without "seeing" - how often I "listen" without "hearing" - how often my "vision" isn't sharp or accurate (vision, for me, having to do with what I conclude and assume based on what I see and hear, if that makes any sense?) I can pray only that I will learn to live in ways that lead me beyond just looking to seeing - beyond just listening to hearing - and to a clear vision of who I am and what I'm supposed to be doing with my life. I pray daily that I will never go back to a time when I can "look" at a person of another race or faith or economic status and not "see" that person's human-ness and/or how much LIKE me he/she is. I pray that I will never go back to a time when I can "listen" to notes without "hearing" meaning in melody. I think you probably catch my drift here :) I hope so!
As I told my Facebook friends a few minutes ago . . . Today's expression of gratitude is for my eyes and my vision. I am profoundly thankful for those times when I do, INDEED, see what there is to be seen in this world . . . beauty, nature, smiles, etc., and I am thankful, as well, for the tears that sometimes come to wash my eyes "clean"
Hope you're living today in a spirit of "Thanksliving" for in so doing, I believe you (and I) are living "Thanksgiving"!!!
OMG -- you have pretty much trumped whatever I might have said about my own gratitude for my vision, my eyesight, and "vision" in a global sense. You and I have the similar issues with sight -- and I think share the same gratefulness for being able to see, because we are only a few steps away from it being impaired. I suspect sometimes it always has been impaired, but it's all I know -- and -- all you know, too. How can we know what we're missing if we can never live inside someone else's eyes?!
ReplyDeleteI think those of us with less than perfect vision are more attuned to sight - and I suspect that is why I spend a lot of time feeling grateful for it. Dear God -- what would it be like to live without it?
I remind myself of one thing, though, and that is that vision in the global sense depends NOT on eyesight, however, but on attitude of living with one's mental eyes wide open.
Precisely - - - I couldn't agree more with what you say about "vision" . . . that's where I was trying to go and never quite made it!!
ReplyDeleteThanks for adding that . . . makes things make better sense :)
That is a beautiful Horn of Plenty! The colors are warm, and the setting is elegant!
ReplyDeleteI like what you said about vision, in both meanings. I hope you keep your eyesight for a long, long time!
Thanks so much!!! I am STILL thinking about this "vision" thing and all that it means . . ., it kind of just "hit" me when I was starting to write about "looking" and "seeing" and "eyesight" and "vision" . . .
ReplyDeleteYou may see more of these musings . . . thanks, again, my friend, and especially for the good wishes!!!!