On A Clear Day – Sunday, July 17, 1983
None of us has a complete, objective view of the world. We see things through the prism of our own personalities. Ask any three witnesses about an event and they’ll give three different accounts, colored by their own character and experience.
It is those differences that make us interesting to one another and provide style and personality in our relationships. But there is some danger that we may become victims of our own vision, thinking that what we see is the only view, the only answer.
On a dirt road in Canada which has been traveled on muddy days until the tire grooves are deep and unyielding, a sign advises motorists, “Be careful which rut you choose. You’ll be in it a long time.”
So, it can be with our outlook and the way we live our lives. We can get stuck with a particular point of view and travel our lives in it as if it were total. We can see through a “glass, darkly”1 and think it is clear, With some vanity, we may even wish that others were as “objective” as we.
But there are troubles with taking our partial view as a whole. We may judge others on superficialities. Many of our deepest rifts with friends or family come because we misread them, trusting too much in our own point of view. How many people have been judged aloof when they were only worried or shy? How many injuries have we blamed others for, when it was only our own insecurity seeking justification? “You’ve never liked me,” says one person to another who is bewildered at the charge. It may be little use for the accused to deny it. The accuser has flung the charge out of the skewed view of his own personality.
Another problem with believing we see everything clearly is that we can become mired in our own problems, fluttering like moths against the wind, thinking there is no solution. We may be batting ourselves against a wall that someone else could show the way around.
When we’re out of solutions and see no alternatives, when the way we look at a relationship is hurtful, we need to ask if we are seeing life clearly. Is there another, more helpful way to view a situation? The lyrics say, “On a clear day you can see forever,”2 but not every day is as clear as we think, and we need to remember our limitations.
1 New Testament, I Corinthians 13:12
2 On a Clear Day, as arranged by Arthur Harris
________________________________________________________________
July 17, 1983
Broadcast Number 2,813