Pink Eye

There is a nasty cold virus circulating at the moment which carries the added feature of pink eye – or conjunctivitis. I felt an incipient cold brewing for a few days before the dreaded pink eye manifested itself in all its swollen, red, oozing way. Now I’m lying low, unwilling to either frighten someone off by my monstrous appearance or, more to the point, pass the wretched stuff on to someone else!

Inattention to washing the eye out regularly results in vision which is blurred by the sticky substance welling up within the eye. But extreme care has to be taken, I was advised, because pink eye is incredibly contagious – so separate towels, renewed pillowcases each morning, even different hands for handling the clean cotton balls and the used ones.

Jesus taught, ‘Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are healthy, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are unhealthy, your body also is full of darkness. See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness.’ (Luke 11:34-35)

It’s easy for us to look at the world with a distorted lens. Our ‘eye’ becomes blurred by predominant cultural norms and social values. We need to calibrate ourselves daily by immersing ourselves in God’s Word, and sitting with him in prayer and silence, listening and taking note. There are so many distortions prevalent today, and not all are obvious. Some sound pretty good, maybe even pretty godly. It’s easy to be misled by a blurred lens.

I’m sure it happens to me more often than I know. Note to self: if Jesus needed to linger with his Father through the nights, what makes me think I can just breezily catch his drift from a few minutes speed reading through a Bible passage and a few arrow prayers?

While I’m laying low until the pink eye clears, I hope to immerse myself longer in God. With his help, I might just manage it.