I can see clearly now, the vain is gone

It took a while before I allowed the word “conspiracy” to gain serious traction in my mind. One must be careful not to overreact; a charge like conspiracy is weighty and should be disregarded until there simply is no other explanation.

Perhaps a bit of information about me will help you to see why my suspicions took root. I am, at 46 years old, physically stronger than I have ever been in my life. On a good day I can bench press 315 pounds, leg press 1000, or do 16 reps of 225 pounds on bench press. This excellent health and strength was really the deciding factor for me in determining that someone or something is out to get me.

The issue came to my attention just couple of months ago. At our old home we had a little workshop for me to do “man projects” in, and I was pleased to be able to carve out a little spot at the new home for that purpose as well. But the first few times I went into the new shop to “piddle around” (good southern terminology, that) I found myself, for some reason, squinting a great deal. Nothing seemed as clear or sharply in focus as it had in the old shop.

I wrote these occur- rences off to different lighting. Not too long after, I sat down at my desk in the church office to catch up on some reading. It was then that my suspicion began to run wild; a book I had been reading with perfect ease suddenly had to be held far away from my face to be able to be seen clearly. Someone had tampered with the font!

I immediately suspected spiritual warfare; if a man as great as Daniel the prophet can have an answer to prayer hindered by a devilish power, someone like me, of far lesser stature, is not above having the font in an important book tampered with to keep me from gaining from it the wisdom I need.

I prayed for victory, and went about my business as best I could. Then it was a pair of binoculars that was sucked into the fiendish conspiracy. Early one morning I saw a large Blue Heron on the other side of the river. I grabbed the binoculars and held them up to my eyes so I could get a close up view of this magnificent creature that has been designed and created by the good hand of God.

But, in horror, I re- alized that the left eye piece had been twirled, and no matter how hard I tried, I could not get it back into perfect focus. The kids? Perhaps. A person less spiritually astute than myself would automatically assume them to be the culprits, no doubt.

But I knew better. This was yet another example of the growing cloud of conspiracy. How many evidences does a man need before he is willing to state the obvious? The very last straw was, of all things, a plate of spaghetti. Yes, I realize that there is nothing particularly spiritual or even essential about pasta. But, as I looked down at my plate, I had to stifle a gasp; the noodles were ever so slightly fuzzy. Not fuzzy in a “moldy” sort of way, but fuzzy in more of a “Mulder” sort of way.

I could hear him in my mind whispering “trust no one,” as I stared at this clearly supernatural phenomenon. And then I saw them, sitting just a foot away from me, my wife’s reading glasses. No, no, it couldn’t be...

As you may have guessed, and to paraphrase an old song, “I can see clearly now, the vain is gone.” The spaghetti test came back conclusive; I am getting older, and my eyes are not quite as strong as they once were. But with the very weakest of reading glasses, and a shelving of my pride, everything looks as sharp and clear as it did in the days before the conspiracy began.

All of this reminds me of the vivid description of the aging process so picturesquely described in Ecclesiastes 12:1-7. Take time and read it; the older you get, the more meaningful it becomes.

I the mean time, the words of verse one are what I will leave you with, “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.” Old age is coming for all of us, so it is incumbent upon us to invest the strong days of our youth into God and the things of God.

There is nothing fuzzy at all about that.