Sight

A couple of years ago I realised that something was wrong. Apparently ‘they’* had decided to make the small print on packaging and labels much smaller and, as a result, unreadable. Who had taken this decision? Why was I not consulted?

I battled bravely on, straining to read the ridiculously tiny writing and occasionally being defeated and needing to guess at a cooking time or asking someone else for help. In the end though, enough was enough and I complained to a higher authority: my wife. Strangely, she didn’t agree that small print had just got smaller; she wondered whether the problem was with me and my eyesight.

Imagine my surprise when the optometrist at the opticians concluded that indeed I needed to wear glasses to help. Worse than this, they asked me my age and were completely unsurprised that my eyesight had got worse. Apparently this is very common. But the glasses made a complete difference. With glasses I can now read small print again. It turns out the problem was with me, not the entire rest of the world. The world was not actually conspiring against me.

Sadly, more often than I’d like to admit, this can be my reaction to problems: if there is something wrong then the fault lies with the world in general or at least someone else. Far more frequently than I care to acknowledge though, like my sight, the problem actually lies with me. Maybe I need to take a good look at myself first. With glasses on of course.

Jesus taught this in Matthew chapter 7:

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

Quite strong. 

It is much easier to see faults and issues outside of ourselves but this won’t help me read cooking instructions.

 *you know them, the baddies who have too much power and influence in this world.