Having an eye disease has ensured many, many tests over the last thirty-five years. Each doctor and each hospital has had their own set of tests but they were all looking for the same things. My eyes have been dilated more times than I can count. There is a test that I’ve had done several times that is quite invasive; it requires these hard contact like instruments that are placed on top of my eyes and they are designed to keep me from blinking. They are approximately the size of a nickel so they cover the whole eye. I have to sit in a completely black room for thirty minutes before the test is done. This is to make sure that my eyes are totally adjusted to the dark. I then move to another dimly lit room to begin the test. The contacts are put in place, my chin goes on the machine and the light show begins. For the next ten minutes or so, there is a succession of bright lights being flashed into my eyes at different speeds. First it starts with a flash about every five seconds. Then more frequently at about three seconds. Then one second, eventually it is at the pace of a strobe light. This is to measure my eyes reactions to bright lights and how they adjust or don’t adjust.
The next test of color choices isn’t invasive at all, however I can’t really tell much about colors. This test is over pretty quickly because of that. On and on the tests and dilation go. I always have a field test done to see how much peripheral vision I have lost. For this test, I put a patch over one eye while they test the other. Again, I place my chin on a chinrest and I am given a beeper to push whenever I can see the light appear. I am to look straight ahead and the person doing the test moves a little light all around the outer edges of my vision and I click as soon as I see it. There are many areas that the light is in that I simply don’t see. They are in my blind spots.
This made me think of how I have another type of blind spot. When I get wrapped up in my own thing and I forget to pray, when I choose to sleep in a little later and then don’t have time to read God’s word, or when I concern myself with unimportant details of planning and snap at my loved ones out of stress… these are blind spots. The devil knows my blind spots and will hide in them until I can see “the light”. Jesus is the Light of the World. He is the light of my world and I sometimes can’t see Him when I don’t spend time with Him. We all have blind spots that the enemy can and will hide in, keeping us focused on why we didn’t get that job. Why that spouse found refuge in another person’s arms. Why our child had to be laid to rest. Why we can’t seem to pay all the bills despite how hard we work. The blind spots are endless. The only way to remove them is to keep our eyes focused on “The Light”.
John 1:5 says “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it” (ESV). In those blind spots there is darkness, we cannot see the light. Friends, whatever your blind spot may be, God’s light cannot be overcome by the darkness. Keep His word in your heart and the blind spots will shine with Jesus’s light. He can give you sight in the blind spots.
Around the Table 