When was your last heart exam? I am not talking about the last time you went to the doctor and he held the stethoscope up to your chest and heard the rhythm of your beating heart? I am asking when the last time someone asked you how is your heart? What is in your heart? What wakes you up at night? What makes you jump to your feet in the morning? What makes you laugh? What makes you cry? Most of all, What is it that you pray for?
You may be as surprised as I was to know that Per the American Optometric Association. “Having 20/20 vision does not necessarily mean you have perfect vision.” 20/20 vision only indicates the sharpness or clarity of vision at a distance. Other important vision skills, including peripheral awareness or side vision, eye coordination, depth perception, focusing ability and color vision, contribute to your overall visual ability.
It is recommended that we have our eyesight checked at least once a year. Now I know that when it comes to my eyes, I did not really worry about this check up until you guessed it, I was having problems.
It is no wonder that we do not do a physical heart check annually. Let alone many people live life with out ever being able to do the kind of heart Check we are talking about.
The physical heart we seem to have a little easier time accepting help with. Let’s face it, it is a matter of life or death. Without your physical beating heart, you cannot live. Although I can name a few people that even refuse this visit.
For the matter of this blog though we are talking about the place in our heart where we tuck away secrets, pain, love, hope and faith. All the words we can name but cannot tangibly hold in our hands.
What makes us go to get a Check on this part of our Heart? Do I consider this part of my heart when I consider the quality of my life?
I am guessing many of us don’t.
We will never be perfect, and I am so thankful that is not required of me. I am my worst critic. I don’t think anyone ever told me I had to be perfect. Sure, people around me wanted things done certain ways and in their timing. This making me feel as though I had to be perfect. They never told me I had to be. I told myself I had to be.
Do you want to know a secret I learned over the last few years? I felt the expectation of perfect, but Perfect in your eyes will not be perfect in someone else’s. Perfect does not exist.
Please hear this. Say you are gifted in organization and you have a friend over, and you criticize your house as being cluttered and unorganized. In her heart she see’s this as your strength. Her thoughts of her home with stacks of paper’s in every corner now becomes a place she has no hope for. Your perfection becomes her measurement on what she needs to obtain.
There is only one Person that was placed on this earth that can set an example of what perfect could look like and while we should all do our best to live with his words as our wisdom we will all fall short.
If we focus too much on Peripheral issues, we will lose sight of the goal. Visions that occur outside the point of fixation.
In other words when we have scripture as our foundation in our Heart, and we see someone in worldly position take a stand against scripture, but call themselves Christian do we loose sight of the foundation an look to the person in authority with our Peripheral vision.
I believe 2020 is a time that we all start asking ourselves to look at our Hearts. What is our foundation?
If Jesus were to stand in front of you today could you bend a knee and say check my heart Lord?
I am going into 2020 with Empathy as my word of the year. I am asking the Lord to check my heart at every encounter. Every door. Every misstep. I won’t always get it right, but my heart will be checked.
When I get it wrong, because I will! I will be having the lesson of Getting My Heart Checked For 20/20 Vision.
I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people,
Ephesians 1:18
Reference of Visual Acuity was from https://www.aoa.org/patients-and-public/eye-and-vision-problems/glossary-of-eye-and-vision-conditions/visual-acuity?fbclid=IwAR1-xX58Vr14EPCwuOI4K1_URqEqPRcEVV1jX3lqNv8D898JSpT0W4FR6tY
