The Eye Doctor Prophet
My eye doctor is a prophet.
During my last eye exam, he brought that one sheet of paper with the smallest print you have ever seen close to my face.
“Read the smallest line.”
I successfully read it. Feeling rather proud of myself, I waited for his assessment.
Instead, my eye doctor delivered a prophecy:
“Behold! One night you will go to bed able to see the print in front of your face, but you will awaken the next morning to blurriness.”
The dreaded presbyopia.
I looked it up. The American Academy of Ophthalmology defines presbyopia as the gradual loss of the ability to see things clearly up close. It is a normal part of aging. In fact, the word presbyopia comes from the Greek words meaning “old eye.”
Oh, great.
My eye doctor is a prophet not just because he can foretell the future of my sight, but he also provides a deeper insight into the truth.
Perhaps sometimes our inability to see something is precisely because it is too close.
The spirituality of St. Francis de Sales teaches us that God is close and present here, in this moment. Yet, there can be long stretches in our lives when we cannot see God clearly.
In those moments, I often look for God in some distant place, in some dramatic experience, some great answer, some extraordinary moment.
But perhaps God is so close that we have trouble seeing Him. So close that we bump into God every moment of the day without much notice.
The truth is, God has not become distant; God is too close for me to recognize.
Yet from Scripture, belief while blurry is blessed. In John 20:29, Jesus tells the apostle Thomas, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
Do not fear the blurry.
May God be praised!
Fr. Joe Newman, OSFS
Provincial
Toledo-Detroit Province
