should have gone to [a certain brand of opticians whose name I will not use as I am not being paid for advertising on this blog, but now you are thinking of them so I have failed in trying not to mention them]

I have just come back from an eye test. I can remember the days when you just had to look at some letters on the wall and the optician would shine a torch in your eyes to have a quick look. Today’s experience was a high-tech equivalent of a medieval torture! I had air puffed into my eyes (to check pressure?), dye put in, eyelids pulled around, photographs taken of the retina (with a flash) and other uncomfortable experiences.

I trust the opticians and assume that all of these ‘tests’ told them important things about my eyes. But it felt that some of the tests could not possibly have told them something useful and I wondered whether at least one of them was simply just for fun – something that the opticians laugh about together when the customers / clients / patients / punters have gone home.

The end result is that my eyes are okay at the moment, that my contact lenses are the right prescription, and that I should update my glasses so that they are the same prescription as my contact lenses. I have also realised that close-up reading is more difficult with my contact lenses in or my glasses on, and was told that it is a consequence of getting older. Don’t they know that I have got a year younger recently (see link)?

All this talk of eye tests has made a connection in my mind between one of Paul’s letters and Ezekiel. I am sure you know what I am talking about.

For the benefit of those who have just woken up and can’t make the obvious connection…

For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 
(1Co 13:12)

Still not sure? Paul was writing about how we don’t see the whole picture. Mirrors in his day were not the shiny perfectly reflecting items we have today, they would have given a fair picture but it would also have been distorted, with imperfections in the glass. This side of glory we can’t see God’s plans fully.

Ezekiel had an amazing vision (read the whole of chapter 1 if you want) and at the end of it he tells us that his description of it is of the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. Not the Lord, not his glory, not the likeness of his glory, but the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD (thanks to Glen Marshall for pointing this out last week). That alone caused him to fall flat on his face.

Our God is more than we can imagine, understand, conceive or know. But he has made himself knowable in Jesus. The incarnation is more than a ‘quart into a pint pot’ illusion, it is God limiting himself so that we can understand him, get to know him and experience him without falling flat on our faces.

Makes you shiver, doesn’t it?

Two friends go out to a club. One friend with a wooden eye says that he’s nervous about girls making fun of him. His friend tells him not to worry.

When they get into the club, the wounded friend eventually gets up enough courage to ask a girl if she’d like to dance.

Excited, she says, “Would I?!”