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Ray-Bans—particularly Aviators—drew nothing more than yawns back in 1986. It’s because we all owned a pair, and apart from slight variations, they looked just alike. None stood out above the rest.
My dad’s rose-tinted shades, on the other hand—now those were something special. “Prescription only,” or so he claimed, “straight from Europe,” the truthfulness of which always lay in doubt. What mattered most, however, was the satisfaction of sliding those rarities on.
To view the crisp clarity of a robust springtime sky through those lenses—along with the lingering hue left by the Mount Saint Helens eruption of 1980—was like nothing I’d ever seen. The brilliance of that spring, 1986, was unparalleled… though maybe that had more to do with my youth than what I actually saw.
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Life—as I viewed it back then—was by and large rose-tinted. And it should be when we’re young. Hope-filled aspirations lay ahead, not behind. An entire lifetime of unrealized achievements, I assured myself, would soon be met.
I’ve since learned—if we’re being honest—life has a knack for discoloration, particularly within our rose-tinted world.
“It’s just the way it is,” we’re fond of telling ourselves.
But statements like that quietly undermine the character Christ is developing in and through us. Can’t you see—everything, according to God’s providence, is precisely as it should be.
That means He, the Lord, will forever have our best interest in view. Even if we cannot see it.
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One day, there was a blind man sitting on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet and a sign that read: “I am blind, please help.” A creative publicist walked by and stopped. He noticed only a few coins in the hat.
He asked if he could rewrite the sign.
The man agreed.
That afternoon, the publicist returned. The hat was now full of bills and coins.
When the blind man asked what he had written, the publicist said, “Nothing that wasn’t true. I just said it a little differently.”
The new sign read:
“Today is Spring—and I cannot see it.”
Same setting, but with a different lens.
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During World War II, a man returned home to find his house had been bombed.
What remained wasn’t much—just scattered debris and fragments of broken glass.
He determined to gather the shards of red, blue, and gold—and reassemble them on the ground, fitting them together into something no one else could yet see.
Within a few short days, a beautifully crafted mosaic began to emerge.
His son finally asked, “Why are you building it down here?”
The father replied, “I’m forming and fashioning it down here… so it will fit perfectly up there.”
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It’s good to remember this springtime that what we experience in the Christian life is not always the full picture—but it is enough to get us through.
