Hope for the Days When Your Faith is Blurry

I’m not very happy with my new glasses. I guess, technically, they’re not exactly new anymore, because I’ve had them for at least six months. Sadly, I’m still getting used to them, and it seems that I’m not seeing as well as I did with my old glasses. For someone who reads as much as I do, blurry vision is more than just an annoyance—it’s a real obstacle!

It’s one thing to have to tilt my head or simply take off my glasses to thread a needle or to read the fine print in the footnotes. It’s much worse when blurry faith alters my vision of God. It usually looks something like this: “Lord, I can’t see what you’re doing here. Or maybe I should say, ‘I see what you’re doing, and I don’t like it.’ Here’s what I would do if I were you…”

Then, as God’s northeast representative, I enlighten him with my game plan.

Elijah’s Blurry Faith

Thanks be to God for the Sacred Text that paints people as truly human and not as one-dimensional paper saints! The Old Testament prophet Elijah also suffered from blurry faith. First Kings 18 recounts the familiar story about Elijah’s competition with the prophets of Baal. Given the task of calling down fire from heaven, only the God of Elijah showed up, and as if that wasn’t sufficient varsity-level spirituality, Elijah went on to announce to King Ahab the end of Israel’s prolonged drought.

Instead of following up with a victory party, Elijah fell into a pity party, absolutely convinced that he was alone in the world. God’s provision of a nap, a snack, and a one-on-one was quickly followed by his first encounter with Elisha.

The God who sent fire from heaven to “consume the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust, and lick up the water that was in the trench” was still on duty. Elijah had simply stopped seeing him. 

How many times has God used simple self-care steps or the input of a friend to clear your blurry faith? (We make things so complicated sometimes.)

I need to have the “eyes of my heart” enlightened every day by carefully stewarding what I’m listening to and believing. Like Elijah, I have a tremendous talent for finding the darker side of everything.

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Elisha’s Clear Vision

I wouldn’t be surprised to find that Elijah shared this spiritual low point with Elisha during his internship. After all, we sometimes learn more from others’ mistakes than from their successes.

By the time Elisha was out on his own, he had honed his spiritual eyesight to an amazing sharpness—much to the relief of his own protégé. Second Kings 6 sets the scene with the king of Syria royally ticked off by Elisha’s ability to predict Syria’s next strategic move and then warn the king of Israel. When he learned that Elisha was in Dothan, he sent a great army of horses and chariots to surround the city by night.

Morning found Elisha’s servant in a panic, seeing the Syrian army all around him. With clear-eyed faith, Elisha asked God to open his friend’s eyes to reveal a host of fiery chariots surrounding them with protection. Even in that moment of crisis, God was present and active.

In addition to the special insights that would have come with his prophetic prerogatives, Elisha had obviously practiced looking for God to show up. He had a trained eye. Even though I’ve been walking with the Lord for a good many years, sometimes my blurry faith keeps me looking at the enemy—and missing the rescue.

God’s Prescription for Blurry Faith

In one of his majestic run-on sentences, Paul prays for the believers in Ephesus and guides Christians of all times to God’s prescription for blurry faith. He asks, “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give [us] the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him,  having the eyes of [our] hearts enlightened, that [we] may know what is the hope to which he has called [us], what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe” (Ephesians 1:17-19).

I need to have the “eyes of my heart” enlightened every day by carefully stewarding what I’m listening to and believing. Like Elijah, I have a tremendous talent for finding the darker side of everything. The “Spirit of wisdom and revelation” has to work extra hard for some of us to find our way to hope, to believe the glorious riches are really for us, and to act in accordance with his power and not our own. Thanks be to God for the truth of Scripture—and for the Elishas in our lives who faithfully call us to see the flaming chariots of God’s provision and faithfulness on the days when our faith is blurry.

Holding You in the Light,

Thanks be to God for the truth of Scripture—and for the Elishas in our lives who faithfully call us to see the flaming chariots of God’s provision and faithfulness on the days when our faith is blurry.

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