Focus

I have weak eyes. Not in the sense of vision, but my eye muscles are physically weak. It’s a type of convergence disorder where my eyes have trouble focusing together to form one image for my brain. When I was first diagnosed with this, I was often seeing two when I was reading or looking at things that were fairly close to me. To address the problem, I had to do about six months of eye therapy. This consisted of eye exercises to strengthen my eyes and train them to work together. After that, I could see fine, until college hit. After the first couple of months, I was experiencing the same symptoms and eye strain. It turns out that my eyes were being overworked and now I have to do eye therapy at least once a week or my eyes get tired and I struggle to focus what I'm seeing.

Focus is something that everyone struggles with. It’s your reasoning, your actions, your priorities and goals. Being in college, I’ve found that my focus is directed towards the path to preparing myself for a job and life. This translates into which classes I take, what activities I do, how much time I spend on homework, and when I go to bed.  Recently though, God has been working through my daily quiet times, messages I’ve heard at Church and Chapel (My university has chapel every school day; it’s awesome), and just through conversations with some of my close friends.  My focus needs to be shifted—trained.

My perspective on life is skewed and distorted. My focus is on my needs and wants—things like getting good grades and enough sleep to function, how I feel each day—nothing is wrong with these things, but they are often my focus. Paul’s words in Romans rocked me,

“For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race” –Romans 9:3

Paul loved so much, that he would give up his salvation for his fellow Jews. He loved like Christ did. As the Jesus commanded, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all you might. And love your neighbor as yourself.” My focus needs to change in response. I've been saved and redeemed from my sins. I’m called to live out my life for the glory of my Savior and to share the joy he’s given me. I’m called to be a servant-leader. My focus needs to be on God, then others. I need to leave my needs and desires in God’s hand, to trust that he will take care of them.

Just like I did, and do, have to do eye therapy to keep my focus, I also need to constantly check myself against the Bible. I need to train my perspective and build habits that moves my attention from me to those my life can impact.

Change to the glory of God.

~Ericka