Are These Eyes Fresh?

Sometimes it is refreshing to put on another pair of eyes.

I love when out-of-town visitors stay with us because their eyes are fresh. Their senses have not been dulled to my surroundings like mine have. They can more easily spot reasons to appreciate where I am, both my physical location and my position in life; their very presence reminds me to give thanks every day for the good things with which God has blessed me.

Thou hast prepared a table before me...

One visitor from southern Florida was enraptured by the sprawling oaks, the greenery, and the hilly, winding roads of Tallahassee. The contrast with south Florida's scrubby bracken, palm trees, and flat roads laid out in uninspiring grids was stark to her. I smiled as we drove over hills and around bends, through sunlit canopies of majestic oak limbs swathed with Spanish moss; it was as if I had new eyes.

I was reminded of this today because my brother and his wife moved here from snowy New Hampshire. I enjoyed listening in on their exclamations as we left the airport. "It's green!" After living amid the limited palette of winter in New Hamshire, the sunshine and verdure of Florida refreshed them immensely. I was refreshed too as I looked at my hometown with fresh eyes. I felt like a hibernating mammal crawling out of my den and blinking my eyes in the springtime sun.

Is this not the reason we travel? We may have an interest in seeing far flung sights and various paradises—I know I do—but travel is also a chance to see our home in a new light, to awaken our eyes to blessings already in our midsts.

Is this not the reason we like to meet new people? Whether or not we kindle a lasting friendship with a new person, he or she helps us to see ourselves. Other people enable us to see the sometimes unnoticed grace of God in our own lives.

Many times I wonder how many times God has providentially spared me some catastrophe without my having so much as an inkling of His hand in the matter. What to me looked like a missed turn and inconvenient traffic could have been a lifesaving redirection by the almighty hand at the helm of my life.

I am thankful for the chance to catch up with my brother and his wife. And I am thankful for fresh glimpses of the innumerable graces which God pours into our lives—those seen and those unseen.


photo credit: Kay Gaensler via photopin cc