Faith Like Broken Glasses

Mathew 21:22 "'If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.'"

Windows half retracted, inhaling the bittersweet autumn air into my frustratingly hot car, I tore road in my 1991 Honda Civic. 40 miles per hour...hot stuff. The hopeless hand of dusk began to slip off of the edge of wafting clouds that veiled the mountains. Every familiar curve of the road alloted me a certain ability to zone out and think. "'if you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer'"...my heart boiled.

Questions fell over me like the curious night sky that had begun to form through my windshield but were quickly hushed when I asked God to heal my vision; my physical eyes. Call me crazy but this is what I heard: "You want your vision to be healed? Throw your glasses out the window..."

I was approaching the Aims campus and for 45 seconds I pondered nervously. Within less than a minute, I had thrown my glasses out the window and hurtling over speed bumps, I prayed fervently for my eyes to be healed. I don't think I had been praying because I wanted to see again...but because I thrown myself out that window with my glasses. I had taken a step of faith, and I expected God to follow through. In a manner of speaking, God had told me to "jump" and I had hurled myself headlong off a $200 cliff (which was, indeed, a steep fall). I spent the next few moments trying to recreate the Sunday school miracles I had heard about. "Spit and mud? no...ummm...crap. GOD. Heal my vision! I just tossed $200 out the window"

Well...nothing happened. I still have crappy vision.

and this is where things get truly muddy. This is where people stop believing in the miracle, and start looking for the moral. And maybe that's ok.

The miracle is that I found my glasses two weeks later, dried by the sun and gnawed on by wild animals (or possibly dogs). The moral of the story is that God desires that we have faith like broken glasses. That we are willing to, at any moment, throw our dreams, agendas, vacations, or savings accounts out the window regardless the outcome. Sure, my vision wasn't healed, and there is something to be said for that. but ultimately, the process I had to go through, and the gathering of experience, was worth far more than being able to see across the room without my glasses. God is powerful, but I think that those miracles that Jesus performed were not meant to heal the body as much as they were meant to bless the heart. Remember Lazerus? He died again. Remember the blind man? His vision probably degenerated. Remember the old woman who touched Jesus' cloak? She too passed on at some point.


Still, there is something to be said for the verse. Didn't god say that anything I pray for in faith, I will receive? And does it not also follow that God knew my intention was that my eyes would be healed in the physical sense? That's dumb, right? yeah, probably. though, I think ultimately, I am glad that my vision wasn't healed...because I gained more than I would have if I had just been healed.

Admittedly, I can't say that I completely content. Some pieces don't add up.

in the midst of that, I pray that we be a people with faith like broken glasses...may we be perplexed by the gnawed ends of unanswered questions and find peace in our inability to understand.

That is all.