Other Radio 4 listeners might have caught the programme
yesterday about eyes. I heard a few minutes of it as I drove between places.
My take-away was that developing eyeballs need exercise. When
the eyes of young children are focused on screens, they grow too big and that
makes them myopic. Yes, that can be corrected by glasses, but it can have other
negative effects that come through later in life – an increased risk of
developing glaucoma, for instance, macular degeneration, and maybe something
else.
The antidote: the healthy development of children’s eyes
hinges on their being outside every day, naturally exercising their eyes as
they focus and refocus on things near and far.
God has given us so many ways to encounter him. Focusing too
closely on just one way – be it through a particular preacher/teacher/writer, doctrine,
nature, worship music, or even the Bible itself could distort our vision of the
height, breadth, length and depth of the amazing God. I hesitate about adding
prayer to that list, because surely one can never pray too much? But perhaps if
the prayer is not well-informed by Scripture, teaching, nature and even
experience, it could veer into a self-centred distortion of the reality of God.
I’m reminded of Jesus declaring, ‘I came that they might
have life, life in all its fullness.’ Perhaps it is in the embrace of all the
facets of life we are offered that we really gain a true perception of who God
is.
I don’t want to have spiritual eyes which are myopic; I crave
to have spiritual eyes which see as much of the truth of the glory of the God
we worship as I can take in. I don’t want to slide into a spiritual blindness
which results from too narrow a focus on too constricted an understanding.
On this glorious spring day, I intend to listen to hear God
in the garden as well as in his Word.
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