In the years preceding 2020, so many companies and groups spoke about 2020 as a year of vision and clarity–playing off the whole ‘2020 vision’ thing…
Funny how all that ‘bombastic motivation’ has gone kind of quiet this year, hey! For those of us with any sprinkling of a God-concept, it may seem God has in fact, lost His glasses.
It seems this year is forever spinning way out of control as each day goes on.
But to be honest, maybe 2020 is just messing with our deeply privileged, western first world, affluence entitlement…as it is certainly not the only era human history that has been touched by a pandemic, uncertainty, death or disease.
But, as I’ve gone through 2020, I‘ve asked myself this question often…and I ask it of you today: Has God lost His glasses? Or are we the ones that have actually misplaced our own glasses, or worse, are we wearing someone else’s?
I know what I’m like without my actual glasses. My kids think it’s funny to put them on. They walk around bumping into each other and corners of walls, because the glasses aren’t made for them!
As a young fella I knew what it was like to live outside of a Creator/creation mindset, where my life was lived out of an ‘eat, drink and be merry’ mindset. I was my own god, and with no transcendent meaning, purpose or accountability, my whole experience of life was downright selfish. Suffering and evil made no sense and had no redemptive purpose that I could see.
I was oblivious, choosing the glasses (or the blue pills from the movie The Matrix) on offer from my education, my government, my media consumption, and going back to sleep on a regular basis.
But it all changed for me 29 years ago when I met Jesus in my bedroom, at the age of 18.
I had an encounter with the Creator of the universe as the Bible my mum gave me when I was a little boy fell off my bookshelf, landing open on Ephesians 4:17-24, right in front of me.
I read it. And like the red pill in The Matrix, I swallowed it. And got woken up.
BORN AGAIN.
REBORN.
In an instant, I had a new birth within me. I crossed over from being a deny-er, an enemy, a ridiculer of Jesus and His followers, to being hungry and thirsty for Jesus, to living His way and being willing to suffer for Him.
Redemption entered my life.
Suffering began to make sense.
Hope dawned through trials.
God gave me His set of glasses to see life, and the problems I faced, through His eyes.
I pray that today, wherever you are in your view of the year that is 2020 and your view of God, that you will see He has not lost His glasses. He has not left us alone. He is not unaware and aloof from our earthly trials and tribulations.