“You are from God, little children, and you have conquered them, because the One who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.” (1 John 4:4 HCSB)

My husband just received his first pair of bifocals. They were long overdue. For the past several years, he’s had to squint over the top of his glasses, with his reading material inches from his nose, in order to read. So why, you ask, didn’t he break down and get bifocals long before this? The answer is simple. He wears a very heavy distance prescription, and he has been told that bifocals weren’t available with his prescription. But all of that is past history. He now wears his new bifocals with pride, and he can read perfectly well, with the page where it is supposed to be!

Funny thing though. He still pulls his reading material up to his nose and squints over the top of his glasses! Why you ask? You got me! But I’m having a lot of fun laughing at him over it!

That is, I WAS having fun . . . Until the day the electrician made HIS fateful visit!

Whoever designed our house certainly wasn’t a woman! The laundry room, which also doubles as the entrance from the garage, is the darkest hole in the entire house. The only existing light switch is by the garage entrance, and whenever I want to enter the laundry room from the house side, I have to grope my way around the appliances, stumbling over whatever shoes my boys forgot to put away, feeling for that switch which never seems to be where I remember it to be! But now, I no longer have this problem! The electrician installed another switch by the other door! Problem solved!

Funny thing though. I still grope my way through that pitch-black room, stumbling over the dirty laundry strewn across the floor, to the light switch by the garage entrance! Why you ask? You got me! But my hubby is having a lot of fun laughing at me over it!

So what IS our problem anyway? Life has been rendered MUCH simpler, and we still choose the hard road!

I believe that the answer lies in one little word: “HABIT”! He is in the habit of squinting over the top of his glasses to read, and I’m in the habit of stumbling across a dark laundry room! And habits are hard to break!

So what’s the solution?

I don’t know. But I’m pretty open to suggestion!

This entire scenario has made me think, though. So often I’ve been in contact with serious Christians who are burdened down by worry, enslaved to addictions and entangled in a vicious cycle of sin. They love the Lord, they’ve accepted His gift of salvation, but they continue to be bound by strings of their past. Why you ask? Probably for the same reason my husband still squints over the top of his glasses: Habit! You see, we may have the solution to all of life’s problems in our hearts, Jesus Christ, but if we are so in the habit of doing things our own way, by our own strength, than just like I overlook the light switch by the house entrance to the laundry room, we overlook that Jesus is right there, wanting to help, if only we’ll let Him!

What do you say, friends? Should I continue to stumble through the dark laundry room? Should my husband continue to squint over the top of his glasses to read? Should you continue to stumble through life, burdened by cares, sin, addictions?

Of course not!

Lord, help us accept YOUR help. Help us to cast our cares upon YOU! Help us to seek YOUR assistance to break the binds of addictions and sin. Help us to live up to the potential YOU’VE placed in each of us! Help us to stop groping through dark laundry rooms and to stop squinting over the top of bifocals!

Lyn Chaffart