Thinking Out Loud, Volume CCCLXXIV

It had been an especially stressful day...you know...that kind of day where everything that can go wrong does go wrong. When I finally had an opportunity to relax and clear my mind that evening, I kicked back in the recliner with a book that I had been reading. It was a biography of a man who had an unusually troubled life as a child, and that trouble followed him on into adulthood, and as I delved into the story that evening, I found myself reading about a young man who was dealing with alcoholism, drug abuse, family turmoil, and a life spent in and out of jail. If I was looking for a little pick-me-up that night, that book was not the place to go, because it was having the opposite effect on me. In retrospect, maybe it WAS what I needed, since it taught me a lesson. Here's how it happened: I was already feeling down, and my book was bringing me down even further. As I was reading, I pulled off my glasses to rub my eyes, and when I put them back on, I noticed a Bible on the table beside my chair. Half unconsciously, I picked it up, laid it on my knees, and opened it, while leaving the book I had been reading in my lap. I now had two books in my lap. One was a story of a man who had a multitude of problems, and the other was a compilation of solutions to all the problems that I and the man I was reading about had been facing. I glanced up at the Bible to see what portion of scripture I had turned to, but the words were blurry and out of focus, so I looked back down at my book to words that were clear and easy to read. So I went back to the book and all of the problems that came with it. It's simple to explain why the words in the Bible were unreadable while the words in my book were so clear. It was my glasses. I describe them as "no-line bifocals," but I think the technical terminology is "progressive lenses." I look through the bottom of the lenses to read, and I look through the top to see more distant objects. Since the book was more in my lap while the Bible was on my knees, when I looked at the book, I looked through the bottom, and when I looked at the Bible, I was looking through the top, causing the words to be out of focus. That's when it hit me. Those lenses are really magnifying glasses, which cause objects to appear larger. When I would look at my book, I was magnifying the problems, yet when I looked at the Bible, the book of solutions, I was treating it as something more distant since I viewed it through the top part of my lenses. I then realized that whatever I magnify will be what appears larger in my life. It's what will be more in focus. I was holding problems in my lap, yet I was holding the solutions in my lap as well, only a couple inches away, but they seemed unclear and out of focus, because I magnified the problems. Had I put forth the tiny effort to trade places with the book and the Bible, I would have reversed the situation, by magnifying the solutions and placing the problems in the "out of focus" area. God was in that Bible, ready to help. All I would've had to do was magnify Him and bring Him into focus. It would've been so easy to do. Instead, I went right back to my problems, while leaving the solutions right there in my lap. I can't really explain why I did that. Maybe it's because, as Barney Fife would say, "I must be some kind of a nut." Preston