Eyes Squeezed Shut

Our family went to Disney World in 2013 after I had completed all of my breast cancer treatment and we did this ride called The Rockin’ Roller Coaster. This roller coaster takes you from 0to60MPH in just 2.8 seconds—practically how a pilot in a superjet feels taking off from an aircraft carrier—yes, that speed. 5G’s worth of speed and pressure. 

Well, I’m glad I didn’t know all of that before I got on that ride. My husband Vern was going to ride with Grace who was in 3^rd grade at the time, and I was going to ride with Isaac, who was in 1^st grade and barely pushing 40^th percentile on the growth chart. But he had met the height requirement for the ride, so we were good to go.

I guess some red flags should’ve gone off when 3 ride attendants came to put all of their body weight into Isaac’s seat harness to be sure he was in there GOOD. Because when we started to accelerate, I began to comprehend that I may be arrested for putting my youngest child in extreme danger as we corkscrewed and inverted our way through the ride in the dark.

They took a picture of the 4 of us on that ride…Yeah. There was Vern and Grace eyes wide open grinning ear to ear hands in the air doing the happy seat dance.

And then there was me and Isaac. Eyes squeezed shut, mouths in full grimace, holding onto the seat bars with death grip white knuckles.

And honestly, I think that most of us are trying to keep our eyes closed during this crazy 5G ride called LIFE. We don’t really want to see the next corkscrew. We don’t want to see the craziness raging on either side of us. Sometimes we don’t even want to see the person sitting next to us. We are just trying to survive the ride in the dark.

The human eyeball is perhaps one of God’s greatest inventions. It is essential to our daily function (for most of us), yet so delicate that spending too much time looking into a bright light can damage it.

But we need light. Something in our nature craves it. Why is that? Why do we need light?

Well, I think there are three reasons why we do. First, we need light for our safety. So I’m not sure if you guys know this, but none of us were designed to be able to see in the dark. We lack a tapetum lucidum (tah-PEE-dum LU-see-dum)—a tissue layer in the eye that allows for night vision. So when I go on one of my early morning hikes during our family camping trips, I start out long before the sun comes up, which means I have to wear a headlamp so I can see the trail. Yes I look really silly with it on.  But it’s either THAT, or no hike in the early morning—it just wouldn’t be safe because I couldn’t see where I was going without it—I don’t have tapetum lucidum.

Second, we make better decisions in the light. When Vern and I were dating, we had agreed that we wanted to keep our bodies pure for each other until our wedding night. We had read somewhere that people’s ability to control themselves dive bombs at around 10PM—which adult bodies define as “dark” based on a bunch of boring biology. So one of our rules was a 10PM curfew. We had a handful of friends who agreed to help us stay accountable to that, including a policeman, who would regularly patrol down the street in front of Vern’s house at 10PM. If he saw Vern and I still executing our goodbyes, he would woop! His siren and turn his big light on us and use his bullhorn…”step AWAY from the girl, Vern.” Well… the point is our ability to make good choices in the dark is remarkably bad.

Third, our desire to live comes alive in the light. Something happened to me long before I met my husband Vern that brought my whole happy life screeching to a halt. My doctors advised that I should not be left alone as the incident left me suffering from a high level of anxiety and depression—a clear recipe for suicide. So I was sent home to North Dakota and I burrowed under my bed sheets with the lights off. I found comfort in the dark because I didn’t want to live, and in the dark, I didn’t feel the need to try. But the sunlight would stream into the window and I began a long journey of heart ache to get out from underneath those bed sheets. Because the desire to live comes alive in the light.

So I think we crave light because in the light we are safe. We make good decisions. We are able to function better. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that humans spend a lot of time trying to make brighter longer lasting light bulbs. In fact, the newest light technology boasts a light brightness of 300 lumens per watt that lasts over 12 years. Compare that to the first light bulb, which had a light brightness of 2 lumens per watt and lasted for maybe 3 days. But even the newest technology available in the home is only 60% efficient at creating light.

Why is that? Well, scientists such as myself can come up with all sorts of physical reasons why it’s not possible to achieve 100% efficiency in creating light. But the bottom line is that we don’t understand light well enough to make a light bulb that is 100% efficient.

Still, we need light. We crave light. And even though we do not fully understand light, we work really hard with the hope that one day, we will understand it.

Now if you are a Christian, and I don’t assume that all of you are, and I’m still crazy about you so relax, your heart is already thinking about Jesus. In John 8:12, Jesus says “I am the light.” So to a Christian, Jesus is THE LIGHT. We need Him. We crave Him. Our safety, our ability to make good decisions, and our overall ability to function are dependent on Him.  Because just as Paul says in his letter to the Thessalonians, we are children of the day! We are not meant to live our lives in darkness. 

Personally, I think God intentionally created us without tapetum lucidum tissue in our eyes to make it perfectly clear that we are not meant to live in darkness. 

He had a better idea.

And II Corinthians 4:6 tells us exactly what that idea was:

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light [that’s God] shine in our hearts [WHY?] to give us the light of the knowledge [what kind of knowledge?] of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.

It was the perfect idea. The ultimate light –His light--God's light--would live in us. Not 2 or even 300 lumens per watt—but the 100% efficient ultimate light source of The Lord Jesus at our disposal for free.

So the question is…what kind of source are YOU tapping into? A little light bulb that will last for a time? Or Jesus Himself who will last for eternity? You must choose. For you were not created with a tapetum lucidum in your eye--you require a light source. One choice may help you survive your time on this planet. But the other will surely cause you to live beyond survival and actually thrive.

Thrive on a roller coaster with 5G's of speed and pressure? Yes. Exactly. With the right light.