So the other day my royal-blue eyeglasses were referred to by someone as “Elton John Glasses,” and I feel I must make some response to this charge if I am to retain a measure of dignity in my vocation as servant of the Word. I know that royal blue is not the usual color one would expect a preacher’s eyeglasses to be, but they were, other than their color, quite conservative in their design. They could more accurately be described as the eyeglasses of Elton John’s accountant. They are certainly more conservative than my corn-flower colored eyeglasses, or even my tan ones. If they are going to be a subject of ridicule, however, perhaps I need to stick to the ten or so pairs of black and tortoise-shell ones I have.
“How does one afford so many pairs of eyeglasses, and why would one need so many in the first place?” you might ask. Both are valid questions, and both have simple answers. I afford so many eyeglasses because I raid every dollar store I can find and buy up all the 1.50-rated eyeglasses on the kiosk. I keep so many because I need reading glasses, and am afraid of being without a pair when I need them. I keep a mug with six or seven pairs in it on my desk at work, and a similar mug on my chest of drawers at home. I have two pairs in my car, two in my satchel, and I keep a pair in the breast-pocket of each suit and sport-jacket I own.
I have only recently needed eyeglasses. I once prided myself on being the only person I was related to who didn’t need glasses but when I hit my mid forties things started getting a little fuzzy. The tiny, waifish girl I had mistaken as afternoon office help, but who turned out to be my ophthalmologist, said:
“Mr. Bryson, you have presbyopia, which means….”
“I know what it means,” I interrupted, “It means I have old man’s eyes.”
“No it doesn’t,” she protested.
“Yes it does,” I replied, “I read Greek.”
“Well, most of my patients don’t read Greek,” she smirked.
“Whether they read it or not, it still means ‘old man’s eyes,’” I said.
So now I need eyeglasses, which frightens me. I remember vividly a most disturbing episode of Twilight Zone. In it a mild mannered bank clerk, played by Burgess Meredith (or was it Sterling Holloway?), lives to read. Everyone he knows finds ways to steal his time away, so he gets scant time with a book. The most noticeable feature about this man is his thick glasses - the lenses are as thick as coasters. One day he gets trapped in the bank vault during a nuclear attack. When he emerges, he is the only man left alive. He is joyous about the prospect of enjoying years of uninterrupted reading. He spends days sorting the books in the public library into piles. When he is ready to sit down and begin a delicious afternoon’s read, his eyeglasses fall off his face and shatter. I will never forget the look of terror and loss Sterling Holloway (or was it Burgess Meredith?) has on his face. I remember thinking: “Why doesn’t he have a spare pair?” And so, in addition to my prescription pair, I keep about 20 other pairs around, in case I get trapped in a bank vault during a nuclear attack.
More frightening to me than this has always been the Milton poem that begins: “When I consider how my light is spent ere half my days, in this dark world and wide…” I have always feared blindness, more so than deafness – mostly because God didn’t give us an iPod, he gave us a book.
David says in Psalm 119, “O how I love your law, it is my meditation day and night…..How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth….Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path,” (vv. 97,103, 105). Of course, David’s opportunities to actually pick up the Word and read it were not as readily available as ours – the book hadn’t been invented yet, and scrolls are unwieldy, and yet – nothing is so precious to him as reading and thinking about God’s word. Nothing IS as precious.
And so friends, laugh all you want about my eyeglasses, I’ll keep 20 pair – even more, and in a rainbow of colors – so long as my old man’s eyes can read the Word.
