Just this past week someone kindly smashed the front windshield of my car, costing me, in exchange for ten seconds of their fun, about 3 hours and $300 of my resources. Suffice it to say I was displeased.

This happened on a Sunday morning, and I had to get to church. So, for the day, I drove with a broken windshield. As I cruised, carefully, down familiar lanes, everything looked different. It was hard to see the road because the spiral in front of my eyes was distracting. At times objects to the side of the car would get caught in the broken glass, then spiral in the light along the curvature of the break. It was a disconcerting, but strangely beautiful, experience.

As is the case when in my car, I often think theological thoughts. This moment was no different, and on this day, most likely because of my broken windshield, I began to think about sin. Each of us has sin in our lives, breaks and mars that affect everything we do, the choices we make, and, most profoundly, how we see the world. As I looked through my broken windshield I realized that we each of us look at the world through broken glass–glass that distorts reality, gumming up our vision and making it difficult to make wise choices and judgments. We’re all broken, and because of our brokenness we all see unclearly.

There’s a bizarre catch, though. In time, you get used to looking through the broken glass. It becomes part of your vision; you accept it and learn to live with it. You stop noticing the fractures and faults which, in truth, dominate your whole outlook. Sometimes, tragically, we even become enamored of our own brokenness–focusing on the beauty of the break, rather than the original clarity. We elect to remain broken, rather than undergo the difficulty and cost of healing.

It seems to me that there are only two things to do while we wait for the final healing that God brings at the end. The first is to remain humble; to remember that our brokenness always, constantly, affects both our choices and outlook. I am a sinner (though saved by grace), and by God’s grace so I will remain until I die and am healed. But the second is to undergo the painful log surgery of Matthew 7–removing our logs to see the specks of others; in other words, to remove, as best we are able, in the context of community, and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the broken glass from our sight, enabling us then to see more clearly to help others.

Maybe you’ve settled for broken sight. Maybe you’ve never acknowledged your own brokenness. Brothers and Sisters, do not settle for the broken, but strive for the whole; for while you may for a time see in a clouded way, one day God desires you to see with perfect clarity. Nothing less than perfect sight is what God has planned for you!