Taking the Splinter from Your Eye

Matthew 7:4

How can you say to your brother, “Let me take the speck out of your eye, when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?”

This verse has taken on a new meaning for Paul and I this past week. Saturday night I came home from an event at church to find Paul with his left eye red and swollen.

“I have a splinter in my eye.”

As the good wife that I am, at first I thought he was making a big deal out of nothing. However, after he showed me the very clear mark on his eye and he tried to wash it out for fifteen minutes to no avail, we realized this speck was more serious than I thought.

After consulting with a friend from Mosaik who is also a doctor we were directed to go to the University Clinic. So at 8PM Paul and I headed into the city and away to the University Clinic. We were successful in navigating the dark streets and finding the correct building for the Augenartzt (eye doctor).

It wasn’t a long wait, in fact we ran into the doctor on the way to the waiting room and she ushered us into her office right away. She put some eye drops into Paul’s eye and pulled him up to her microscope.

Since the doctor had the right tools and training, she was able to find the splinter and remove it right away. She had to go back for some rust which had started to form on his cornea; things which Paul and I would never have been able to see if we had tried to remove the splinter at home.

It makes me wonder how many times we go into others lives and try to “help” them without the right tools and training. I wonder how often I have blundered and blinded them instead of helping to relieve someone’s pain I have just instead.

I wonder what things I have missed because of the planks in my own eyes. Those things I can’t quite see and block my vision, those nameless things which hurt.

I wish I had been able to take pictures of the procedure because the doctor really was amazing, but it didn’t seem appropriate at the time. Paul’s eye has been recovering very well this week. Other than some redness where the splinter was he is all better and we both have a new view of how difficult removing a splinter really is.