Metal Shavings

   It was in the fall of 1979. I had purchased a 1975 Chevy Blazer (4WD) with a 350, 4-barrel carb engine. Now at 17 you have this desire to trick the thing out with a potent 5M watt stereo system and some cool lights placed on the bumper for when you go mudding. It's at that point the story begins.
   I broke out my father's drill and 3/4" drill bit and went to work on the bumper to install the lights. I worked at it for over an hour getting the holes drilled. Feeling like a man's man with power tools in my hand, laying on the ground with the drill above me, grime, muck, dirt, ball cap tilted a little sideways, no safety glasses on, while flexing my then 145lb. frame... unaware that as I was drilling, tiny pieces of metal shavings were collecting on my face and into my eyes.
   I clearly realize now that I broke 4 of the 5 LANL safety initiatives, the most egregious being that I am admitting to it... but we all need a little grace to go around. Right? Right?!
   About three hours later I began to experience an odd burning in my eyes. I looked into the mirror through the watery image in front of me wondering what had happened. Praise God for moms, because when I asked her she told me to get to the eye doctor immediately. In one of those rare moments when you actually do what your parents suggest, I got into the car with her and went. The doctor examined my eyes and found metal shavings in both. His assistant cleaned them out, mom paid for the doctor visit and off we went back home. Lesson learned... kind of...
  Today, I'm very glad the ophthamologist I went to had good eyesight himself. Because see if the physician himself had metal shavings in his own eye the size of a steel girder, how could he ever take the metal shavings out of my own? Isn't that the point of what Jesus was saying about having a critical eye? As we go through life, I do believe it's vital to keep an eye on our own stuff before we attempt to even think of performing acute examinations on everyone else's stuff. (And yes, that's me in the picture above whose hair is as orange as the paint job... don't start hating on me because there's less of it and a differing color now...)
  I'm very thankful for the doctor who kept his eyesight in order. I'm thankful for my mother's direction and her payment to the doctor on my behalf. I'm thankful for the Great Physician whose holiness is beyond compare. I'm thankful for His Son's payment for my misdeeds. I'm thankful He is helping me get the steel girder out of my own eye. I'm thankful for the in[sight] He's provided me for living out my life...  In Christ!