This post originally ran in May of 2018… I thought it might be interesting to run again again today…

Over my years of writing and teaching and preaching, I have had quite a few people take exception to my usual optimistic approach to the Word. Some have even told me that I can be optimistic because I’ve led a very easy life and never had to deal with the problems that most others deal with. My reaction to those kinds of remarks is always mixed, with equal prats of amazement and amusement…

We all have our share of problems in this life.

The other day, Friday to be exact, I got to deal with one of my little problems, for it was the day of my annual visit to the Ophthalmologist. I so enjoy this visit, in fact I enjoy it so much that it was my first annual visit since 2012.

The only way I manage these visits is to mess with the doctor. The object of the game is to be so flippant that they think I’m not being truthful about my condition… until they dilate my eyes and look inside, whereupon they tend to fall off their stools in horror at the freak show they’re looking at. You see, I have had macular degeneration for 40 years, and nobody has it that long. Yes, dear reader, I am a medical miracle, because I was diagnosed with this condition as a teen, and teens simply do not get macular degeneration. Even 40 years later, I am a bit young to have it…

I guess that makes me special, doesn’t it?

That, by the way, is the kind of flippancy I have at the doctor’s office. Yes sir, special indeed!

They want me to read the letters on the chart, and I say “What chart?” Of course, I know there’s always a chart right next to the door in an examination room. They tell me to look at the little light and follow it with my eyes, and I laugh at them. Anything I look at simply isn’t there; what vision I still have is peripheral…

And they know that… but they think I’m not being serious. Maybe they can’t see that if I don’t approach the whole subject with a sense of humor, I can’t bear it. Whenever I walk into a wall, I laugh and laugh, just as I do when I miss the first step on a stairway and bounce all the way down on my rear… it just strikes me as comical, as hilarious. You see, that’s a choice I made long ago: Any time you aren’t sure whether to laugh or cry, laughing is a lot more fun.

The doctor told me that the forms I had filled out upon arrival hadn’t indicated blindness. I told her that I hadn’t noticed a question on the form, but then that’s what happens when you hand a stack of forms to a blind person to fill out…

You see, I’m a returning patient, not a new one, and they already have all of my records, but apparently someone hadn’t noticed. Oops.

My visit was topped off with a very interesting thing. Trying to be helpful, the doctor handed me two pairs of goggles, one yellow, the other orange. They can make it easier for some low vision patients to distinguish objects by increasing contrast of light and dark, so let’s see if they might help. You know what happened? They turned everything the same color, either yellow or orange, and when that happens, I have no peripheral vision at all and loose everything.

I laughed and laughed− they don’t run into many people who’ve had MD for 40 years, for there really aren’t many people around town who are over 110 years of age!

I don’t approach Scripture with a sense of optimism because I’ve never had trials in this life. I approach it with optimism because I believe the promises of God, and so should you. We will all face trials in the here and now, of whatever sort. Yet I’m not too concerned about them, because when compared to what we have in store for us… what’s a little trial, anyway.?

I said ‘no thank you’ to the goggles as I left… what’s for lunch?