2010 Vision
January 8, 2010 | 5:47 pm
When I was in 4th grade a group of friends and I were talking about our vision; we had just gotten our eyes tested. One member of the group had thick glasses and shared that he had 20/100 vision. That meant what he could see clearly at not more than 20 feet away, the rest of us could see well from 100 feet. Thus the coke-bottle spectacles!
However, most of us fell somewhere closer to 20/20; that is the visual acuity required of a fighter pilot: Perfect sight—or so we thought. One of our friends finally piped up, bragging, “That’s not perfect sight…I have 20/10 vision”.
We didn’t believe him! None of us had ever heard of 20/10 vision. We had to go ask the school nurse if it was true, and we found out that it could be (I had to check ‘visual acuity’ on Wikipedia to make sure I remembered this fact accurately).
A person with 20/10 vision can see clearly from 20 feet away what the rest of us can only see from 10 feet. Though 20/20 is considered ‘perfect’ vision for most needs, it is possible for people to have better than perfect vision, though it is more rare.
I lost my 20/20 physical vision years ago, but I want to be a person who strives for 20/10 spiritual vision. What everyone else is content to see clearly at 10 feet, I want to contend to see from 20. I want to “fix my eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:17)
Is it possible that we can train ourselves to be that discerning and to change the condition of our sight? I have not known my physical sight to improve, though there are those who claim that you can make your eyesight better through vision exercises. I’m not sure what I think about that, but I do wholly believe that our spiritual vision can improve with constant conditioning. By being attentive to the Word of God and by responding to the reality of the spiritual world around us, the unseen but most important dimension is more and more engaged; it becomes clearer.
I want my vision for this period leading to the year 2020 to be based on clear 20/10 spiritual sight. That way I will see more quickly and distinctly what the Lord is leading me towards in this decade. Things like: What kind of man I am to be in 2020, how I will have loved and developed my kids as they are getting through their teenage years (10 years from now), how I will have grown in the Lord, stayed healthy, built a solid marriage, been effective in my assignment, etc… And when I am able to view those year 2020 issues accurately from far away—both from the year 2010 and with 20/10 vision— I can better prepare to follow Jesus towards those goals.
