Is your vision impaired?

I've worn corrective lenses since the seventh grade to retune my far vision. I remember being absolutely dumbstruck when I donned my first pair of glasses and saw individual leaves on a summer green tree in sharp detail. I knew what trees were of course, I wasn't blind by any stretch of the imagination. I just couldn't believe the detail that was hidden by my visual defect. I kept taking my glasses off and putting them back on, reveling in the clarity of creation as it was meant to be seen.

Similarly, after I passed into my fourth decade and was given a eye test for my near vision, I was surprised to see how much clarity had been lost through the years without conscious knowledge on my part. Again, I put my glasses on and took them off again, marveling at the restoration of sight.

I also understand that there are varying degrees of color-blindness. Ben lost out on an opportunity to train as an aircraft mechanic with the Marine Corps because his color vision wasn't acute enough to easily discern the different shades of gray used in wiring. I myself had more than one argument with friends and acquaintances on whether or not the Nova I was driving was green or brown. In any case, it was an obscure shade of whatever.

My best friend and her family came for a visit a couple of weeks ago and we took advantage of the wonderful weather to make a day-trip out to the lake.

While there, Kellen, nearing 10 years of age, was teasing his dad about his oft-made claim to know absolutely everything about anything. As the good-natured exchange continued, Kellen challenged him with the question, "So, where is heaven?"

Not missing a beat, Jay replied "All around you."

I added, "You just don't have eyes to see it."

I love to watch newborns as their vision improves, but I sometimes wonder if it is an improvement after all. Oh, certainly, we see that they begin to notice more and more detail as days pass, and eventually, they make and maintain eye contact, leading to careful study of facial expressions and thus their education in emotion and vocalization begins. But is it, in fact, a trade off?

I've often wondered, as babies gaze off in the distance somewhere behind my left shoulder, what they're really seeing. I fantasize that perhaps their vision is so acute that they are able to discern the radiant beauty of the angels among us and are so transfixed by that glory they cannot tear their eyes away.

Perhaps the startled look that often precedes a cry of alarm common to that young age is merely a glimpse of the dark angels that inhabit our world, invisible to our earthly vision.

My mom took great joy in relating the story of my great-grandfather's passing as it had been told to her. He was a gentleman of significant years and his health had been in a steady and not unexpected decline as those years took their inevitable toll. Lying in his own bed of many decades, with family surrounding him, he is said to have exclaimed, "Maude (addressing his wife of many years) I can see Jesus and heaven and oh, it is beautiful," then, falling back into the pillows, he died.

It's as if he had received new lenses and was now able to see (again?) that which had been hidden from his earthbound view.

So, perhaps Jay was more right than he realized -- there's no reason to believe that heaven is any farther from us than our next breath, we are merely awaiting the day when, like the Apostle Paul and Great-Grandpa Wilson, the scales fall from our eyes and the hidden things are revealed at last.

"The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light." Matthew 6:22 (NIV)

I recently made the ac-quaintance of a local woman who suffers from macular degeneration, her vision more compromised with each passing day. Won't it be a grand day when her vision is wholly restored?