"New Vision"

By Paula R.Bryant

When a familiar landscape suddenly changes, it challenges our vision. We look around, seeking the familiar. When it eludes us, we pray for help. We ask for the familiar to return to us…because we’re uncomfortable with this new horizon line. It seems farther away. And there’s a mist around us. We can’t see everything clearly in this place, and though we know it won’t be this way forever, we still want to see. Everything. Clearly. Now.
       The horizon line has changed quite a few times in my life. But I was caught off guard when issues with my health challenged my vision. I wanted things to be the way they were. When I asked God to heal me, He immediately answered, “Pray for wisdom.” Propped up in bed, unable to move my head or my eyes, I said, “Yes, Lord,” and then asked Him for it.
       At the time, I didn’t think back on how miraculously God had moved when my first born, my daughter, was put on 100% oxygen at birth and rushed to the ICU. Nor did the mind-blowing way He had shifted me out of what I had always done professionally into a full-time writing career enter my mind. I also didn’t remember in that moment the vision God had given me years before, warning me of this physical attack, but showing me that He would miraculously deliver me.
       In that shadowy place the landscape was still misty. But GOD! Psalm 139:12 and 1 John 1:5b say of Him, “Yes, the darkness does not hide from You, but the night shines like the day. The darkness and the light are both alike…God is light and there is no darkness at all in Him” (ONMB).
       Step by step, the Lord began leading me through a process that refined my vision. As He poured His wisdom into me, I walked it out. Light broke through the mist, and the new horizon line started coming into clearer view. Now I am on another path, continuously walking into the new. And I’m seeing things differently. A fresh, beautifully-unfolding landscape is before me. I have new vision, and I’m making sure to do what I see. How about you?