This is where I leave my glasses Every. Single. Night. If I don’t, I stumble around looking for them. I cannot find my glasses without my glasses.

Visioning and looking to the future is part of ministry these days and especially Interim Ministry, so that’s where my thoughts first went to this morning. Then this article about myopia came across my Facebook feed this evening and I thought about how difficult it is for people to see without glasses, the correct glasses, glasses that are made for their circumstances. And then I began to connect them.

I was 9 years old before I got my first pair of glasses; I should have had them much earlier. This was before the days of children having their eyes checked at a young age was routine. I had fairly good vision in one eye, but very bad vision in the other, and obviously the good one had been compensating for the bad one. Because I was a bit of a bookworm, being shortsighted in the bad eye never caused a lot of trouble. Being far sighted in my good eye made it possible to see the blackboard in school and play sports with ease. But oh my! After the initial distortion that came with wearing glasses, an entire new world opened up to me. The same thing happened around age 40. Returning to school for my Master of Divinity and the mountains of reading made me realize that my glasses were out of date. I was initially a bit dismayed when my optometrist told me I need to move to graduated lenses… after all, I was ONLY 40! When I picked them up, she said, you may have an adjustment period, but stick with it, it will get better. Well, from the moment I put them on, it was like magic! I could read with ease once again.

At both times in my life, I needed someone else to show me how I could see better and it seems that that is the part of the role of Interim Ministry too. To help congregations see what I see, see what a stranger sees, see was God sees.

Some questions about ministry arose:

• What are we stumbling around because we can’t see what is in front of us?
• What ‘corrective’ lenses do we need to put on in order for us to see clearly?
• What guides are there to help show us the way?

Proverbs 29:18 says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”

O God, give us sight and insight, vision and vision, amen.