My Eyes Are Dim, I Cannot See…

Jesus stood up in the synagogue [Luke 4] and read these words from the prophet Isaiah

God's Spirit is on me; he's chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor,
   Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and
      recovery of sight to the blind,
   To set the burdened and battered free,
      to announce, "This is God's year to act!"

The whole theme of ‘visual impairment’ seems to be following me around lately.

number one - Next week we have a speaker from the Torch Trust coming to our Friends and Neighbours group at church.

number two - Our daily Bible readings have been in Mark 8, focussing [oops, sorry about pun] on spiritual as well as physical blindness.

number three - My spectacles have broken!

Now this is somewhat self-inflicted

• I sit with my elbow on the desk, resting my face on my hands, pushing against the side arm of my specs.
• I read in bed and fall asleep – and Bob finds me lying there with specs bent round my face at a bizarre angle.
• I put on my motorbike helmet and then wriggle the specs onto my nose, again stressing the side arms.

In fact I treat these glasses quite badly. But

• I do not take them off and swing them round by one arm.
• Or leave them in places where they will be sat on/walked on.
• Or push them on to the top of my head, risking them falling off from a great height to be smashed [if 150cm can be considered ‘a great height’ that is]

It is two years since I last had an eye test and I know my eyesight has deteriorated. So I went off to my opticians for an eye test.

No, don’t say “Should have Gone To SpecSavers” – cos my personal choice is Boots – they are reliable, reasonably priced – and I get Advantage points, and parking is free…and I am a creature of habit.

Deepa and Janine were really helpful – and when I admitted my bad spectacle habits, they gave wise advice about  which frames would be good/bad choices.  And now I just have to wait a week for my specs [plus free second pair] to be ready.

Bob encouraged me to ‘choose frames that you are happy with – don’t be all thrifty and just go for the cheapest on the display’ – so I opted for mid-price Boots Own Brand [the designer ones weren’t any better, anyway, just more expensive] and then he phoned me whilst I was paying for them, with the good news that my pay has not only come through at last, it is a little more than I’d expected. Hallelujah!

And now I have all these thoughts buzzing round in my head for a sermon on a Mark 8/Luke 4 – but I have already been given a theme for the service I am leading this Sunday, and carefully picked appropriate songs to go with that sermon – so I shall just have to make some notes somewhere and store this new idea away for another Sunday.