Eye problems can be very annoying. A friend of mine told me recently that she was having a problem with her left eye. Everything was becoming increasingly blurry in that eye. She did all of the normal things we all do when our vision becomes blurry. She rubbed it, she closed one eye at a time and looked through each one individually, she used eye drops, etc.. Nothing seemed to help. After stressing out about her situation, assuming the worst, while still hoping the problem would just go away for a few weeks, she finally broke down and made an appointment with her eye doctor.
The doctor had her sit in a chair, then leaned in closely and began to examine her eyes. He would occasionally let out a "Mmmm-Hmmm," or a "Huh." After a brief, but thorough examination, he stepped back and said "Well, I've discovered the problem." Expecting to hear some bad news, she quietly asked him what it was. He sat back in his chair with his arms folded across his chest, broke into a slight smile, and said "You put your contacts in the wrong eyes. The contact in your right eye was ok, because the contact in it was a stronger prescription. But your left eye didn't have a strong enough prescription in it, so it was blurry."
Although she was quite embarrassed by this, she was also quite relieved to find out that nothing was seriously wrong with her eye. Of course, now that her contacts are being used properly, she can no longer burn holes in objects by simply staring at them with the "over-prescribed" eye. But taking the good with the bad, all is well in her world again.
Last Sunday, Bob spoke on a fictional story by Max Lucado about a group of people who would go around placing "star" stickers on others who impressed them, while placing "dot" stickers on people who appeared to be less worthy. In the story, these people would walk around with either dots or stars on them, and in their own minds, the amount of dots or stars stuck on them would determine their value in society. The moral of the story was that it doesn't matter what others think of us, but what God thinks of us. Bob finished his discussion with what I thought was a great line. "It doesn't matter what others think of me, because God made me the way that I am, and God doesn't make junk."
While I thought this over during the past few days, a very different side of that story occurred to me. While it's true that we tend to allow what others think about us to stick to us and shape our self-worth, we also tend to walk around with a bit of an eye problem when we look at others. None of us liked to be judged harshly or unfairly by others, but how often do we do that to them due to our own eye problems? How do our own "eye problems" shape our view of people we don't even take the time to know? How do they shape our view of our own towns, cities, states, country, our even our world?
Maybe, just like my friend in this story, we have our contacts in the wrong eyes. Maybe we have "spots" on our eyes that cause us to view everyone with a sense of harshness or critical judgement that has no basis in truth whatsoever, but is instead based upon our own bad vision.
Bob was right. God doesn't make junk. You are exceptionally valuable in God's eyes. But so is every single person your eyes will come across every single day of your life. Maybe the best thing we can do is to go to the "eye doctor," and ask God to show us the people around us "through His eyes" instead of looking at them through our own critical eyes. If we can do that, we will go a long way toward being "God's people" in this world, not judging others unfairly, but instead giving them value they may have never even believed they have.
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