Published: November 27, 2009 08:23 pm         

THE JOY LADY: Bifocal vision: Focusing on Jesus’ coming AND Jesus’ coming again

I got new glasses a couple of weeks ago, and am I sure glad I did. Seems my old prescription wasn’t so good, and hadn’t been from the very beginning. I thought that fuzzy focus and blurred lines were just part of the aging process and a side-effect of my diabetes, so I didn’t do anything about it. I just muddled through, never realizing it was the prescription that was off-kilter, not my eyes.

So, when I got these new glasses, using a prescription that was accurate, I was amazed at how clearly everything looked. I was even more amazed that I had suffered for five years, never speculating my spectacles were less than spectacular.

When I remarked to my husband that I could see so much better, he reminded me of the time I got my first pair of bifocals.

After his exam, the young eye doctor told me, I needed bifocals. BIFOCALS? Me? Bifocals are for old people, I told him. He said, “Well, when one reaches a certain age…” I had to restrain myself from doing him some kind of bodily harm that would keep him from reaching his own certain age.

I told Dr. Smart Aleck I had worn contacts for years and did not relish giving them up. That’s when he said he got the brilliant idea that I should wear a regular-strength contact in one eye and reading-strength contact in the other eye. He promised me it would work. After a week of driving with one eye closed and sitting at my desk with my head cranked at an odd sideways angle that gave me such a neck ache, I stumbled my way back to the eye doctor, explaining this was not going to work. Then he suggested I could go back to contacts and use a pair of reading glasses. He even suggested that I could attach my reading glasses to a chain and wear them around my neck. He pointed out to me that his grandmother did and she had never lost her reading glasses. I pointed out to him that although I was a grandmother, I didn’t want to advertise that.

So, it was out with the contacts and in with the glasses. My bifocals (and my new prescription) have improved my vision. The improved clarity is remarkable, and the bifocals keep me seeing things in two ways – both near and far. I need for my eyes to focus on the small print as well as the big picture.

Isaac Watts (1674-1748) must have had bifocal vision, seeing both what was in his (and our) present and what is in his (and our) future. Watts read Psalm 98, just 9 verses long, and was inspired. He read, “The Lord has made his salvation known and revealed his righteousness to the nations;” and “Let the sea resound, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it;” and “Let them sing before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples with equity.”

Watts wrote a hymn based on Psalm 98. His hymn celebrates the coming of the Lord to judge the world in righteousness. The hymn calls all nations and everything in the Earth to sing for joy at His coming. Not His birth, but His return. We know the hymn as “Joy to the World.” It’s too bad we sing that hymn only at Christmas, for that hymn focuses not only on the Child who makes heaven and nature sing, but on the Risen King and the day of His returning.

“Joy to the World” is a hymn with bifocal vision. We need to look back and praise God for the gift of His Son, for His ruling of the world, for the glories of His righteousness. Yet, we need to look forward to the day of His returning – when men employ songs, when fields, floods, rocks, hills, and plains repeat the sounding joy, when the nations will prove the glories of his righteousness and the wonders of His love.

When we focus on Jesus’ coming AND Jesus’ coming again, that’s a bifocal vision of what He did, what He is, and what is to come. That kind of vision makes all things clear.

Joy to the world, the Lord is come; the Savior reigns; He rules the world with truth and grace. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8) Joy to the world!



Verna Davis may be reached at VrdSpeaks@

yahoo.com.