What You're Used to Seeing

A magnificent transformation occurs in my kitchen. How? I decide it's time to clean the window screens. They just seem dusty and more like a platform for spider webs than anything else. I don't really notice on most days, but since I'm in a change-of-season cleaning frenzy, I pop the screens out to wash them.

But then I realize that I never open these particular windows, especially now in the colder weather. I question why I have screens at all. I therefore put them aside into storage and go about washing my kitchen window, inside and out.

You would think I lived in a brand new sort of house.

The clear view to the forest! The immensely bright late morning sun! It's like that allergy commercial when someone pulls the hazy film off and you see things as they really are, as they are supposed to be. 

That screen blocked more than I could ever imagine. That screen--that I really couldn't discern--hindered my whole experience of the landscape around me. It filtered everything into a dim version of a backyard.

Oh, to remove whatever's dimming my own heart's experience! Oh, to tear off the filter and wipe away the grime to reveal what's always there but shadowed! I take a deep breath and ask God to do this kind of cleansing in me. I cannot look out my window without thinking of all I missed with that screen blocking my view.