Actually, I don't spy with my little eye because my little eye is spasming horribly, and to control the pain of the muscle strain, I have my eye covered up.
As I mentioned in a post way back in February, last year I experienced some eye issues. I noticed this one day at the gun range a year ago when I missed a 24x36 inch target positioned 15 yards away from me with over half my shots. That, by the way, is so seriously absurd it gives a whole new meaning to "broad side of a barn". I went to see my optometrist who ran a battery of tests, sat in front of me, and said frankly, "Learn to shoot with your left hand and eye. The muscles in your right eye won't do this anymore."
New glasses weren't going to fix it. Surgery wasn't an option. This was my new normal.
So I did the reasonable thing. Nothing. For about six months I did nothing. Then some things happened that put me in an NRA pistol instructor course, which meant I had to qualify with a shooting accuracy I had never had before, not even with my right eye and right hand, but after multiple trips to the range each week for a month where I put 100s of rounds through my .380 in an effort to retrain my brain to shoot with the side of my body that felt totally awkward, I was accurate enough to qualify and passed the class and now am an NRA pistol instructor.
Certainly looked like God was restoring and giving back what the enemy stole.
We pray that, you know. Us charismatic types. We pray for the restoration of what the locusts stole and what the enemy stole and what anyone else stole. And we will dog that until it gets restored with serious interest.
But sometimes the point isn't restoration. Sometimes the point is closure.
When I graduated high school, I wanted to enter the military and become an expert long-range marksman. That was derailed due to a trip to the OR in which my knee was...made better... but not fixed. Three years ago I thought that might be something God was restoring. I met someone who had the connections to get a beautiful custom rifle built for me, and there were connections to someone who could train me, and it was only a matter of time until I was competing in long-range marksmen competitions. Except, the connections suddenly vaporized, and instead of seeing my target through my scope, I saw blank spots in my vision field. My vision is simply too erratic to compete. In fact, it is really too erratic to instruct.
So what was the point of the NRA instructor certification? The point was to demonstrate the difference between stolen goods and a closed door.
Obviously God can make my vision or my ability good enough to pass a qualification. He is capable. When He is capable and He chooses not to, that is no longer stolen goods, that is a closed door, and no amount of praying and claiming and declaring and casting down is going to open it up. At least you better hope it doesn't because it won't be blessed.
We don't handle closed doors well. We stand and war over them, rebuke them enemy, calling what isn't as though it were....refuse to see the new season...the new hope...the new possibilities.
It is a hard faith, this walking away from closed doors.
To walk away from a closed door you have to have faith that God is big enough to open it no matter what...but has chosen not to.
You have to have faith that the God who closed the door will open another one.
You have to have faith that the God who enabled you to live in the old door has also equipped you to live in the new one.
That can be scary stuff, living in a new door, living a way you've never lived, using gifts you've never used...being someone you've never been.
Sometimes it is easier to blame Satan for stealing than deal with the fear and doubt that keep you from seeing.
Faith is being confident of what we hope for, trusting the evidence of things we cannot yet see.
I spy with my (faith-full) little (imperfect) eye...a door...
No comments:
Post a Comment