Shot in the Eye to the Glory of God

January 6, 2010
A couple of weeks ago, on the 27th of December 2009, my son took his new dart gun with rubber bullets, took aim at the bull’s eye, and hit the mark. The bull’s eye was my eye. I was chatting with my sister’s-in-law, oblivious to the little sniper only three feet away. Without warning and no reaction time, my eyeball was blasted. There was no protection, no eyelids closing to protect from a direct hit. It was dead on. My eye was red for over a week. But also with that was a morning eye ache. This has been very bearable…until today.

Today, the eye ache made its appearance but seemed to invite some friends over for the torture. A sinus headache accompanied along with my teeth hurting as well from my braces and sinuses. It was a triple whammy. I prayed this morning through it and asked God to take the pain away. I prayed also that I would be able to glorify Him through it. I asked myself, “How do you glorify God with a headache/eye ache/mouth ache?” There are ways of thought of and certainly ways I did not think of. But here were a few:

One, maintain a positive attitude toward Him. Don’t get negative because of how you feel. The greatest moments in life to prove God’s worth is in the painful times of life.

Two, hold fast to all my Christian values, even through the pain. This is no excuse to lose my temper, be grumpy, be irritable, be unfriendly, etc… I know the kind of man God desires me to be is a consistently godly man. No matter what my troubles are, I want to be consistent. If I am angry, I want to have self-control. If I am sad, I want to have self-control. I want people to see a different attitude in me than they see in a person who does not know Jesus Christ or who claims to know Christ but acts just like the world.

Third, share this with others. This says nothing about me in the end. I am not writing this to glorify Clay. It is more of an objective little dissertation about God. I could not accomplish any of that! I did not feel (subjective) like doing any of that. But that is what God’s character is like (Objectively). So what I mean when I say “share this with others” is not to share this with the intention of trying to impress people with what a swell guy I am. On the contrary, what happened today was totally God’s grace in me. Somehow, some way, I maintained a positive attitude, remained personable to others, shared with others with a good attitude and felt compelled to just thank God profusely for not taking it away, but rather, orchestrating my day to be bearable through it. God is an amazing God.

To add just a bit more to this…you can also just think about the complexity and abilities of the eye. We actually take in vision through those little holes in our head. It speaks volumes of the wisdom of the Creator. You can teach your sniper son valuable lessons about using all things to edify others and not to harm others because God teaches us to love all people, which includes helping them in need and not shooting their eye out! You can also think about passages in the Bible about the eye, plucking it out when it causes you to stumble (the idea of going to the most violently extreme spiritual measures to overcome sin), the eye is the lamp of the body, we are the apple of God’s eye (meaning He will protect us). It is amazing what an eye ache and its mean friends can teach me about an amazing God.