Perfect vision

Just been for a sight test. I wear glasses for certain functions and see okay with them but felt my vision could be better, and I haven't had a test for four years so it seemed a good idea to check it out.
It was fine. I was told that my distance vision has got better and my near vision hasn't got any worse. Therefore I need to keep wearing glasses, in order to read, use the computer, watch TV or go to the cinema, and drive at night, but the glasses I have now are still suited to helping my eyes do all of the above.
I have the right visual aid to suit my impaired vision, and the impairments have remained more or less the same.
The optician, having explained this, then asked me, 'Do you wish to update your glasses?'
Update them? When he's just said they perfectly suit my present needs?
'No, thanks.'
I went out to the reception desk, where the assistant asked the same thing.
'My eye test was fine,' I explained.
'You don't want any new glasses then?'
I don't get this happening at the doctor's surgery. No one asks me if I want a prescription if I've just been told my test results are clear. But then an optician's is a shop as well as an eye clinic, and the staff may be paid commission, or assessed for their professional competence, on how many pairs of glasses they sell, or how many designer frames.
To make everyone feel better, I asked to buy a lens cloth. It was unnecessarily expensive; I could have got one in the pound shop up the road. But it allowed me to walk out of the shop without feeling I'd rejected their helpful attempts to equip me with more of their visual aids than I actually want or need.
It makes me wonder about evangelism - that often rather oddly interpreted doctrine about going out to the whole world to let people know the fantastic news that God wants to be close to his people, and that he sent his son Jesus Christ to close the gap between God's perfection and our two-steps-forward-one-back attempts to get anywhere near moderately good.
If God loves everyone perfectly, totally, unconditionally, that has to be good news, doesn't it?
And lots more people believe in God, according to surveys, than church attendance figures ever show, because most people who believe in God and his love for them never go to church. Most don't see the point of being in a community with people whose lives often seem more flawed than their own, and think they do better reading the Bible or not reading it, praying or not praying, on their own, in their own time and in their own way.
Their lives are okay. God's okay. He loves them. What's the problem?
Why buy a new pair of glasses when you can see, maybe not perfectly, but as well as your natural vision allows you with the help of the visual aids you already possess? Wouldn't you only be changing the appearance - the frames - of your faith if you started going to church? If you wanted to listen to sermons you could tune into one of a number of satellite TV channels and choose the style for yourself.
You could read the Bible for yourself, and thanks to new versions like The Message, you don't need someone to decipher the archaic language and tell you what it means.
You can pray alone, and do, when you feel the need.
And you already mix with plenty of people whose lives are no happier or kinder than your own or anyone else's, so why go to church to meet more of them?
If evangelism means Christians trying to sell people another framework for their life, when their existing one suits them fine, then no - it benefits no one except the person trying to get more people into church because it makes him or her feel she's achieved something. If you want to make the evangeliser feel better, you could do the equivalent of buying an overpriced lens cloth from them - go to a carol service or something, and then plead busy on every other ordinary Sunday.
It isn't fulfilling a real need, is it?
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If someone genuinely feels they know God as closely as they're comfortable with, that church is a load of rules, and that they've never done anything seriously harmful enough to lose sleep over - why would they need to join with other people in getting to know Jesus in their way?
And why would Jesus need more disciples, people committing their lives to him? Asking his guidance before making any decisions? Surrendering their freedom and their free time? Allowing him to judge, and to overrule their own judgement at times, over what is right and wrong and whether or not they're fulfilling their lives or wasting their time?
Why do I need him?
Why would he need me?
Is it for his benefit, mine, or nobody's, to hand in my current aids to vision - which fit me and I am used to, although I know I can't see perfectly?
I'm not going to pay the price to change my glasses, if all the opticians can offer me is a new pair of frames, at a cost. I'll settle for a lens cloth, and buff up the lenses of the ones I've got, and relax in the knowledge that my vision is no worse than it was four years ago.
But if I was offered the chance of perfect vision? No glasses, ever again. And no painful operation, bandages, blood - just a free gift of perfect eyesight, because someone else had already been through the pain and paid the price?
And free check-up appointments for a lifetime, so that if my need for viewing became more ambitious - if I wanted to try deep-sea diving or study the planets or see over the hill - I could call in and receive new gifts to equip me for that specific task?
And the only cost was handing over my present pair of glasses, expensive though they were to me originally, and indispensable to my clear-sighted view of life up till today?
Would I let go of my rights to my present sight and give my glasses away and say yes to what was being offered me? And keep returning at intervals to see what else God wanted to give me?
You bet I would. Without blinking. Wouldn't anyone?
What if what Jesus is offering is not a minor improvement to life, or a reframing of existing opinions?
And not a one-off gift to change my life into someone else's idea of what it should look like, but a constant progression of better-than-befores. Just when I think I see who he is and what he means .... there's more to see, more to enjoy.
A renewal of vision, a refreshment of ideas, new knowledge of him, new insight, new motivation, every time I visit him, every time you or I pray, every time we seek the advice of someone who has better eyesight and may see what we've been missing till today.