The Higher Desert

A week ago today I had surgery on my left eye. It seems 25 years of juvenile diabetes finally caught up with me and I have a retina problem. So I go to the doctor and this guy explains how he’s going to fix my eye. (NOTE: If you have a weak stomach, go read something else)

Anyway, he ends up drilling two holes in the white part of my eye, draining all the fluid out of it, scraping bad stuff off my retina, shooting me with lazers and putting an air bubble in my eye so it won’t collapse until new fluid fills the space. ARE YOU KIDDING?!?!?!?! This sounds like science fiction.

Now I’ve spent a week sitting around doing less than nothing so the whole thing doesn’t fall apart. (BTW - The threat of your eye falling apart is good motivation to sit around and do less than nothing). I’m supposed to go to the doctor tomorrow and find out how things are progressing. I am in awe of what this doctor did and can do. Medical science is a smart culture, and I am way thankful for what they can do to help people.

So as I was sitting around doing less than nothing this week, thinking about how cool my doctor is, I started thinking about my eye and how cool it is. In this process, I’ve learned some things about eyes. The eye is one of the most brilliant machines ever invented - and it has an ability to heal that amazes me. Did I mention that I have STITCHES in my eye? And that having stitches in your eye is OKAY? Ridiculous.

Now the eye is important, but its just one of the amazing things God did when he created the heavens and the earth and humanity. It is scary how much God put into making you and me.

Yesterday I got a phone call from this guy in our church who said his four-year-old daughter had a question for me - this is always dangerous when you are the pastor, because chances are you don’t have a good answer and you’ll end up looking very un-pastor-like in front of a little girl - so I mustered up all my theological brilliance and waited for the question.

Marylynn said she learned is school that she is “fearfully and wonderfully made” and wants to know what it means to be fearfully made. I shot back a couple of quick answers, then listened as Marylynn told me all the scriptures she’s been learning at school and her dad and I talked about how amazing little kids are at memorizing and how great she is doing. Then I though again about my eye and it all came together.

I told my friend to tell his daughter that fearfully made means this: God made you SCARY GOOD! When I consider the human eye and the mind and heart of a four-year-old child; when I consider the beautiful creativity of our God; when I think about who He is and who I am and the love he putinto making me… yeah, it is scary, but man is it good.