From Clear Vision to Peephole Perception: Navigating Life’s Challenges with Faith

How well can you see?

As we age, our vision changes. Most of us transition from young eyes to old eyes, a condition known as presbyopia, which often requires bifocals. Yet, there is a more devastating change in vision called macular degeneration, which steals sight from the sighted.

We had a dear friend who developed macular degeneration, affecting every aspect of her life. She could no longer read, so she turned to audiobooks (long before Audible existed). Watch faces became a blur, so her family got her a “talking watch.” But her greatest challenge was watching baseball. Granny loved the Houston Astros. We’d walk into her house and find her on the floor, inches from the screen, tilting her head furiously to catch a glimpse through the small slit of vision she had left.

Life can be like macular degeneration. When troubles come, we lose perspective because our vision narrows. We develop what I call “peephole perception.”

We view our circumstances as if looking through a peephole—a small opening in a door that lets you see straight ahead but not around you. It lacks a broad field of view.

Under stress—whether from illness, grief, or shock—we see the world through the narrow slit of our pain. We peer through the peephole and wonder, “Where is God?” If He is there, why doesn’t He do something about our terrible circumstances?

This expectation we place upon the Almighty is that He should be like a divine janitor, straightening the crooked pictures in our lives, stopping the pain, and putting everything back in its place. Yet, nothing happens. Is God silent? Absent? Calloused?

The book of Exodus opens in a slave pit, filled with the aroma of sweat and blood. Groans punctuate the air as a whip cracks, opening a wound on the back of a Hebrew slave. In their misery, the people appeal to God.

“During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.” (Exodus 2:23–25, ESV)

God heard. God remembered. God knew.

This is where “they lived happily ever after” should come. Instead, a full generation of greater misery befalls the people. If God heard and knew, why didn’t He do anything? Why did fathers die in mud pits or children in a terrible infanticide?

If I were there, I would want to know why a loving God would allow such heinous acts and why He doesn’t intervene.

The problem with peephole perspectives is not what you can see, but what you can’t see.

In the silence, a Jewish woman named Jochebed gave birth to a son and devised a plan to keep him alive. Through a series of serpentine circumstances, Moses flees and learns about leadership. God makes him ready.

Then, at the right time, God acts.

Did God answer those prayers? Yes. Did He answer them in the way the people wanted? No.

I have no perfect answer for the “why” question when life crumbles in your fingers. But I am left with a choice.

I can believe that either God is inept or callous. My pain can convince me that God doesn’t listen and doesn’t care. But then, where do I turn? I have no power to correct it. No balm exists for a crushed heart.

Or, I can believe in a God who has greater knowledge than I have. I must find the humility to say, “I don’t know all things.” Then, I have to trust that God can take the worst of life and make something of it.

Will it be as I want it to be? Probably not. Will it be what is best? If I trust God, He will work out what is best.

So, like Granny, I have to turn my head to the small slit to see, in those moments, a bigger picture than I can see on my own.