“T, Z, P, T, O, C…” I say as I cruise through the eye chart, until I get to the last two lines.

Once, I even had an eye doctor whisper the letters on the last line to me because I think he knew by then what my prescription would be, and my attempts were hopeless. In all honesty, my natural vision from a distance is not 20/20, which is why I wear corrective lenses.

The past year, 2020, has given me clearer vision in a spiritual sense. So, isn’t it interesting that we use the expression “hindsight is 20/20”?

In reflecting upon my past eye exams, the eye doctor changes lenses in front of me while I look at some sort of object, and then asks me which is clearer or about the same. I am sure the eye chart is an overall screener, and the process of changing the lenses is to identify my exact prescription. In pondering this process of adding corrective lenses to enable me to see with 20/20 vision, I have thought about what spiritual “corrective lens” I discovered during this past year.

The corrective lens for me in 2020 is this main verse: 1 Timothy: 1:7, “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”

For me, the sharper spiritual vision came when I realized that fear is a spirit. For some reason, I always thought of it as an emotion. This realization was a gamechanger in how I responded to the many challenges of the pandemic, such as scarcity of necessary items, being thrust into providing virtual education for my job, shutdown, quarantine, and the list goes on.

The vision I gained through this lens was prompted by a sermon I heard from the Irvine Branch in California. In this sermon, Brother Steve Kerby played a song, written by Sister Rosanne Champine.

Sister Rosanne wrote this song many years ago just after the Columbine school shooting rocked the nation. She listened to the news after this tragic event, and she heard a mom say,”The reason we moved to this town was because we thought it was safe.”

Sister Rosanne thought, “What is safe?” The Lord then gave her the words to the song, which she titled “Safe.” If you listen to the words of this song, the message is that “safe” isn’t a physical place, but it is essentially living a life that pleases the Lord.

So, when I look through the lens of knowing that God does not give the spirit of fear but of love…and I focus on living a life that pleases Him, I can face the year ahead with the confidence of the Lord. This lens provides a sharper, clearer image, not the same as when I began 2020.

The prescription is clear: “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind,” and this leads to 20/20 vision for the year of 2021.

Click here to listen to Brother Steve Kerby’s sermon, and here is where you can read Sister Rosanne Champine’s testimony regarding how God inspired “Safe.”

What About Your 2020?

How has the Lord sharpened your spiritual sight this year? Are you seeing more clearly in general or in respect to one specific area of your life? Leave a comment and tell us about it.

This article has undergone ministry review and approval.