Dear Friends:

We struggle with spiritual vision. Our “eye” problems began at the fall. Genesis 3:6-7 records this fact:“So when the woman saw that the tree…was a delight to the eyes…she took of its fruit and ate and she also gave some to her husband…Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked….” (emphasis added)

Jesus noted the damage to spiritual vision that resulted from sin by quoting Isaiah in Matthew 13:15: “For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; so that they might not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears and understand with their heart and turn–and I would heal them.”

So Jesus came to earth to restore our spiritual vision. One of the most quoted prophecies of the Messiah is Isaiah 9.2:

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;

those who lived in a land of deep darkness–

on them the light has shined.

Jesus announced his ministry to his hometown congregation of Nazareth by reading a passage from Isaiah referring to the recovery of sight:

‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’

(Lk 4:18-19)

In the same Spirit, I want to tell you about the greatest Christmas gift that I ever received–my father’s eyes.

Let me explain. People who knew us both say that I have my father’s blue eyes, deep-set beneath the high forehead inherited from our Danish ancestors. I, however, was born with a significant birth defect affecting my eyes.

Strabismus is the medical name for the condition of abnormal deviation or alignment of one eye in relation to another. It is caused by the lack of muscle coordination between the eyes, causing the eyes to cast in opposite directions.

Strabismus is my condition. I was born with crossed-eyes.

My mother carried me to church for the first time when I was one-month-old. She was thankful for this last child born healthy in her 44th year.  My birth was just eighteen months after the death of an infant daughter from a congenital heart defect. I represented a risk taken by my parents in the hope for one more child to fill the house with laughter and love.

I am told that a teen-age girl stood on the church sidewalk before the worship service and asked to look at me bundled up in a blanket in my mother’s arms. My mother proudly granted her wish. The girl took one look and said thoughtlessly, “O-o-o something is wrong with his eyes.”

That was the start of a lifetime of cruel and ignorant comments. My earliest memories are of my big brother Terry fighting other kids who made fun of my “weird eyes.” “What’s the matter with your eyes? Are you retarded or sumthin’?” were grade school questions that I frequently struggled to answer.

It is important for a lawyer to look people in their eyes. I’ve learned to force myself to look up at people after years of having clients glance over their shoulders to see who I am looking at when no one else is in my office or having them withhold their handshake because they think I am greeting someone else beside them. It has made me wary of taking jury trials where eye contact is a crucial part of persuasion.

I have developed strategies to compensate. For instance, in my frequent public speaking engagements, I have learned to handle the questioners who can’t tell when I’m calling on them. “The lady in the back in the red suit, what is your question?” I’ll ask. “The gentleman in the blue and gold striped tie, what would you like to discuss.” They’ll look around and then down at their attire before speaking up. This technique borders on the rude, but it’s an effective alternative after I’ve pointed at their raised hands to no avail.

My spouse and friends tell me, “Your eyes are fine. They only wander a bit when you’re tired.” All I know is that I have to talk to people to make a living, but I have to resist the compulsion to avert my eyes in shame.

There is a soft spot in my heart for Ulysses S. Grant whose wife Julia had a form of strabismus. When he was elected President, Julia was very conscious of how the visible defect in her eyes would affect her image as First Lady. She was urged to undergo what was then an extremely dangerous surgical procedure in an attempt to improve her appearance and reduce embarrassment to her husband. When Grant learned of this. He reputedly told her, “Please don’t have the surgery. I like you that way.”

It is the reaction of others to my wandering eyes that is the problem, not what I can see through those eyes. Even in late middle age, I drive and engage in most activities without glasses. My condition would be much worse if it wasn’t for the Christmas gift of my sight through the care of a gifted surgeon and the loving heart and the skilled hands of my father.

Most persons see binocularly, one image seen through both eyes. Strabismus can form a double image, one in each eye, and the brain suppresses the image in the diverting eye, causing a condition called amblyopia and leading to a vision loss in the nondominant eye.

In serious cases such as mine, surgery can strengthen or weaken the muscles that regulate the movement of the eyeball. The eyes can be surgically realigned to restore single binocular vision thus saving the sight in the nondominant eye, but the surgery must be done in early childhood to obtain the desired result.

My father was a carpenter and building contractor who worked very hard for not much money. There was no health insurance available to our family in 1957 when I needed the surgery.

Our family was in dire financial straits. My eldest brother had been seriously injured in an accident requiring multiple hospitalizations. My sister had a mysterious, paralyzing disease that stumped a series of expensive specialists. Then there were the expenses of the intense, but futile battle to save the life of the infant daughter. There were church school bills that my parents considered a necessity and a faithful tithe was always paid to the Lord.

The family had no funds to draw upon to pay for the surgery that the ophthalmologist, Dr. Culver, said that I needed to insure sight in both eyes and to improve my appearance.

Dr. Culver lived out of town on the coast. The driveway of his home passed through a deep ravine that flooded in the winter cutting off access to the house for days. Learning of my father’s vocation, Dr. Culver proposed a trade–if my father would build him a bridge, Dr. Culver would perform my surgery.

So my father constructed the bridge. This was a big project. The ravine had steep banks. Pilings had to be secured in the stream bed to anchor the structure. Then a trestle was erected from the base.

The month it took to build the bridge was a time of sacrifice for my whole family because there was no other source of income for our household needs.

Dr. Culver performed the surgery in December, the week before Christmas. My eyes were bandaged after surgery, but I have strong memories of this time. I remember the strangeness of the hospital when I woke up after the operation in complete darkness. The ice-cream that the hospital served was a cold, sweet vanilla surprise as mom spooned it out to me.

My mother stayed awake beside me each night, reading to me so I wouldn’t pull off the bandages covering my eyes. Dad stopped by each evening on the way home from work and I can still smell the sawdust and salt-sweat as he laid his warm, stubbly cheek against mine.

I came home to the wet, lavish licks of greeting from “Spot,” our fox terrier as I squealed and fumbled to pet him.

The bandages came off at home on Christmas Eve. The first thing that I saw were the bright lights on the Christmas tree and a tricycle that Dad bought from a second-hand store and repainted bright red with red, white and blue streamers hanging from the handles.

My father built a bridge so I could see it all. He built that bridge not for money or achievement, but for love of his child.

It may be that some of you reading this have eyesight that’s diverted and darkened–perhaps by a murky misunderstanding that you can’t correct; by a wall of indifference that you can’t overcome; by a guilt that drops your gaze in shame; by a physical disability that you can’t see beyond; by a relentless sorrow that has robbed you of sight of the future; or by a thick, disorienting, oppressive darkness that leaves you groping, but never grasping.

Here is the truth–you are God’s child. Your heavenly Father built a bridge for the love of you that stretches from the throne room of heaven to the secret recesses of your heart. This bridge is anchored deep on the stout wooden legs of a manger in Bethlehem on one side and the blood-stained cross-ties of Calvary on the other.

The Apostle John succinctly described the superstructure of this bridge in 1 John 4:9-10 quoted from The Message, paraphrase: “This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about–not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.

The Son of God himself, Love’s Pure Light–placing his feet in our very human footprints with his hand raised to his Father above, holding on to what he could no longer see–became that bridge for us. He is the Christmas miracle, the complete package–the bridge that we cross, the eyes to see us through the crossing, and the strength to carry us across. He is Jesus Christ, the First Born of Creation, and our Everything!

When it is all said and done, my knowing that my father loved me enough to build the bridge so that I could see takes the sting out of all that other stuff that I’ve endured about my eyes.

Even more than that, in fact much more than we can ask or think, does our heavenly Father love you and me. He sent his only begotten Son to restore the vision of his kingdom and his grace.

If that truth registers in our heart, not just our head, it changes how we view everything. If we know that we are really loved no matter how we have erred and how dense the darkness that may surround us, we can endure the night and can move ahead in enlightened freedom toward the tender mercies of the dawn.

The Apostle Paul prayed that every believer would receive this life-changing vision. His prayer is recorded in Ephesians 1:17-19:

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe.

It is the desire of the heart of your Father in heaven that you see yourself as you were created to be-His precious, beloved child. That is his grace. That is his truth. That is who you are, because you have the eyes of your Father.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps 34:8)

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

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Please note that the content and viewpoints of Mr. Hansen are his own and are not necessarily those of the C.S. Lewis Foundation. We have not edited his writing in any substantial way and have permission from him to post his content.

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Kent Hansen is a Christian attorney, author and speaker. He practices corporate law and is the managing attorney of the firm of Clayson, Mann, Yaeger & Hansen in Corona, California. Kent also serves as the general counsel of Loma Linda University and Medical Center in Loma Linda, California.

Finding God’s grace revealed in the ordinary experiences of life, spiritual renewal in Christ and prayer are Kent’s passions. He has written two books, Grace at 30,000 Feet and Other Unexpected Places published by Review & Herald in 2002 and Cleansing Fire, Healing Streams: Experiencing God’s Love Through Prayer, published by Pacific Press in spring 2007. Many of his stories and essays about God’s encompassing love have been published in magazines and journals. Kent is often found on the hiking trails of the southern California mountains, following major league baseball, playing the piano or writing his weekly email devotional, “A Word of Grace for Your Monday” that is read by men and women from Alaska to Zimbabwe.

Kent and his beloved Patricia are enjoying their 31st year of marriage. They are the proud parents of Andrew, a college student.