When Blurry Eyes Are Not About Eyes
"Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases." — Psalm 103:2-3
Two Things Named in One Breath
Psalm 103 puts two of God's benefits side by side in a single sentence.
"Who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases."
Forgiveness and healing. Not in separate lists. Not in separate categories. One clause, joined by nothing more than a comma.
The Hebrew poetry here is deliberate — the two lines are parallel, meant to be read together. Whatever else that means, it means the biblical authors did not think of these as unrelated activities.
What Connection Looks Like in Practice
Consider a woman who could not read. She was told she must never have learned. She explained that she read perfectly well; she simply could not see. Everything was blurry — she could not make out two-inch letters on a hat a few feet away.
The person praying with her did not begin with her eyes. He began by asking questions about unrepented sin. Among them: Do you have unforgiveness toward anyone?
Yes. A former partner, who had grabbed her by the hair and slammed her face into a dresser repeatedly, breaking out all her teeth. She showed him — the front of her mouth was empty.
Consider how legitimate her unforgiveness was. If anyone ever had a case, she did. Nobody in the world would have criticized her for holding it.
She was asked if she would be willing to forgive him. She said yes.
A short prayer of forgiveness. Then a request that God open her eyes.
She read the letters on the hat. Then a book held four feet away, aloud.
The Thing Worth Noticing
Her eyes were not the problem. Her eyes were where the problem showed up.
That is what makes this so difficult to find on your own. The site of the symptom often has no obvious relationship to the root. A hip and a decision from high school. Eyes and a man who broke her teeth. A spine and a communion table. Nothing about the symptom points toward its cause.
Which means you cannot reason your way to it from the symptom. If you could, someone would have solved it years ago.
The only reliable way through is the one these lessons keep returning to: deal comprehensively with what is unrepented, without trying to guess which item is connected to which symptom.
That woman was not told her blindness was caused by unforgiveness. She was simply led to deal with what was there. The connection revealed itself afterward.
Point to Ponder
Where the symptom appears tells you almost nothing about where the root is.
Verse to Remember
"Who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases." — Psalm 103:3
Question to Consider
Have I been trying to figure out which of my sins caused which of my problems — instead of just dealing with all of them?
Today's Practice
Stop trying to match things up. It is a trap that stalls people for months.
Instead, take your two lists — your issue grid and your list of unrepented things — and set them side by side without drawing a single line between them.
Then write across the top of both pages: "I do not need to know which one connects to which."
Your job is not diagnosis. Your job is thoroughness.
Now take one item from your unrepented list — start with an act of forgiveness if there is one available — and deal with it properly today. Out loud:
"Lord, I forgive ________ for ________. I release the debt entirely. I am not collecting anymore."
Then check your issue grid tomorrow. Not to demand a result. Just to observe.
Prayer
Father, I have been trying to be my own detective, working out which sin caused which problem, and I have gotten nowhere.
Free me from needing to understand the connections. Let me simply be thorough with what You show me and leave the matching to You.
Where I am holding something against someone — even someone who genuinely wronged me terribly — give me the willingness to release it. You forgave far more of me than I am being asked to forgive of anyone. In the name of Jesus. Amen.
Her eyes were not the problem. They were only where it surfaced.