As humans, we thrive on 3D vision. It gives us depth perception, helps us understand the difference between something being next to us and three feet away. It lets us know when there is a sharp dropoff versus dip in the road. This week, I learned what it means to have 2D vision.
During the beginning of the week, I had the opportunity to travel further into the mountains of northern Guatemala with Sally, our ministry host, to help her at her clinic. At the clinic Sally invests life into the local community, both by treating there physical ailments as well as their spiritual ones.
The experience of helping her was both fantastic and life changing, but no more so than what happen afterwards. On the hour long drive back from the clinic in the back of a pickup truck, a piece of debris was kicked up and scratched my right eye. It was both painful and a bit scary. It continued to hurt for hours afterwards, and Sally treated it with medicated drops and bandaged it closed, giving me instructions to keep it closed for several days in order to let the scratches heal.
The pain that day was bad enough, but worse was the next morning. On our morning walk to the bus pickup to get to the construction site, I realized that with one eye covered I only had 2D vision. Suddenly the 15 minute walk through the muddy streets of Queche went from a morning commute to an exercise in frustration and constantly trying to avoid falling on my face. Without depth perception, I couldn’t fully tell when there was a dip or step, causing me to slip several times or jar myself on an unexpected steep drop.
This problem continued throughout my day at the work site, and I started praying to try and understand what God wanted me to learn through my limited vision. By the end of the day, God showed me His lesson, and I’ve never been more grateful for a bout of 2D vision.
God showed me that in life, He is the third degree of vision. Christians are humans, just like the rest of the people on the planet. People fault us for getting angry, sinning, etc but that is what we are. Human. What separates Christians is that third degree. HE gives us the grace and identity we need in life so we never have to look to others for affirmation. The Holy Spirit brings us love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and self-control. Christ shows us the ultimate meaning of love and how we should show it to others.
We all see the world for what is appears. Full of happiness but also full of terror, sorrow, poverty, and death. With Christ we see all of this and more. We see the world as a step in our journey. The world is our time to live our lives before we go to join God. We can see God’s hand in our daily lives, see His creativity in nature, His heart in other Christians, His creations in all mankind. That is what our vision as Christians gives us, that’s what God provides. To walk through the world with 2D vision would be a difficult, tedious thing, just as to walk through the world without God in our lives make our lives dark and limited.
He is our meaning and our joy, and God reminded me of all of this through a day of 2D vision. His lesson was clear, and I’m so grateful for the pain required to learn it.
Another incredible thing? I woke up the next day and my eye was fine. No pain, no blurriness. Only the lesson He gave me. Our Father is amazing!
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Prayer Requests:
Please pray for those that are still sick! I myself was sick and am still recovering. It’s been a long road with stops for IVs and meds along the way.
Please pray as we prepare to go to our new ministries! We are currently finalizing travel logistics to our new ministries. I’ll let y’all know as soon as I know what I will be doing.
