Faith Eyes Scripture — 2 Corinthians 5:16–17

“If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”
The other day, something happened at home that stayed with me longer than I expected. For a few weeks now, my husband Ed has kept saying, “I need to go to the eye doctor. I need new glasses.” Now, this man has several pairs of glasses, and somehow he keeps losing them. One day at work, he forgot the pair he needed, so he started asking around, trying on other people’s glasses. One after another, nothing worked until finally someone handed him a pair that fit his eyes just right. He said, “Oh my God… everything is so clear.” He started noticing details he had not seen before, lines in people’s faces and things far away that used to look like a blur. A whole world that had been there all along, but he just could not see it. Same place, same people, same world, but different sight.

As I listened to him talk, I could not help but think how easy it is to get used to seeing things the wrong way. We adjust to what is blurry. We learn to function without clarity. We stop questioning what we cannot quite make out. Until a moment of clarity reminds us of what we were missing.

That is what happened after the resurrection. Jesus was right there, alive and present, yet people still missed him. Mary thought he was a gardener until he called her name. The disciples on the road thought he was just another traveler until he broke bread with them. Saul thought he was doing God a favor until a light stopped him and restored his sight. It was not that Jesus was hidden. It was that their eyes had not yet caught up.

And I wonder how often we walk through our days like that, seeing but not really seeing, looking at people through old assumptions, looking at ourselves through outdated stories, settling for a blurry version of what God is trying to reveal. When Paul says that if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation, he is not speaking in theory. He is talking about a real shift, one that does not always change your surroundings right away but changes how you perceive what is right in front of you.

We have declared things finished that God is still working on. We have defined people by their past when God is shaping their future. We have even doubted what God is doing in us.
But once our eyes open, once we begin to see through the lens of Christ, something shifts deep within us. We begin to notice grace where we once saw failure. We begin to see possibility where we once saw limits. We begin to recognize that God has been at work all along, even in places we had already dismissed. There was more there than we realized. We just did not have the clarity to recognize it. So here is the question I want you to sit with today. What are you missing because your vision has not been renewed? Who have you already made up your mind about? What situation have you labeled as stuck? What part of your own life have you quietly given up on?

Maybe it is not that nothing is changing. Maybe we need new eyes. Sometimes the problem is not what we are looking at but how we are seeing it. So ask God for that. No need for a loud prayer or a perfect one, just an honest one. Lord, help me to see again, clearly.

Prayer: God, give us new eyes. Help us see what you are doing, even when it is not obvious. Teach us to trust that you are still making all things new. Amen.

By Rev. Kay Dubuisson