Fix Your Lens

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to see the movie "Hidden Figures", starring one of my favorite actresses, Taraji P Henson. Three African American women played an important role in launching the first successful space mission for NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration). While NASA saw three colored women, God saw three women who possessed the intelligence and ability to create this historic event. This magnifies the significance of fixing our own lens. We have to correct the way we look at ourselves and the different things we encounter. If we change the way we look at things, we can change the way we live. A part of our spiritual training involves training our mind to see the best in ourselves and every situation we face. In other words, we need to train our minds to see God in our situations as well as ourselves.

I wonder how many opportunities are missed because of the way they appear? Sometimes when we assess a situation, we see opposition. God can look at the same scenario and see an opportunity. This is because of looking at things from a different perspective. Opposition may be present in a situation, but opposition is God's opportunity to perform a miracle. We can only understand this if we correct our lens. Contact lenses are used to correct visual defects. We must adjust our vision to see things from God's perspective instead of our own. Our eyes see defects while God's vision is perfect. I remember laying in my bed looking at the immobilizer that supported my torn patellar tendon on the night it occurred. Although I saw a torn tendon, God saw a testimony. When I experienced unemployment, I took a step back and realized that God was providing me uninterrupted time to work on something that would bring him unlimited glory. When we're faced with an opposing or intimidating situation, fix your lens to find God in it. Even listening to others can magnify the visual defects that appear. Someone told me that my patellar tendon injury occurred because I went to a gym that my membership didn't cover. This same person also mentioned that God's intended lesson for me was trespassing. A synonym of trespassing is sin, and the last time I checked, we serve a God that forgives sins (John 1:9) and doesn't punish us for them. If I looked at my situation through their eyes, I would have felt defeated and disappointed. Once I looked at it from God's perspective, I felt encouraged knowing that he was creating a testimony that I could share with the world.

Not only do we need to see the God in our situations, we need to see God in ourselves. The Message translation of 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 states “You realize, don’t you, that you are the temple of God, and God himself is present in you? No one will get by with vandalizing God’s temple, you can be sure of that. God’s temple is sacred—and you, remember, are the temple.” Despite what we see or what other people say about us, we have to recognize that God in within us, meaning that we cannot fail. We also have to realize that God chose each of us for a reason. If God believes in us and feels we're good enough, then we are good enough. God sacrificed his only son for us, but we'll miss this if we don't correct our lens to see this. We may look in the mirror and see a broken individual, but God sees a whole child of Christ who is capable of fulfilling the purpose he planned for our life. We are labeled as sinners, but God is capable of turning a sinner into a winner. We have to adopt the mindset of the African American women characters portrayed in Hidden Figures. They understood their capabilities despite their gender and skin pigment. No matter how your situation looks or how others perceive you, fix your lens to see God in yourself and every situation you encounter!