Splinter In Her Eye

The doctor hovered over my little girl’s eyeball with a drill in his hand. I was so tense that my muscles were sore. Neck, back, arms, legs, closed fists. I was holding still for her, I guess. I thought to myself, “What if she panics, or what if she jerks her head away out of fear? And just how sure is his hand?” She was sitting in his surgical room late one evening, responding to a call from the hospital emergency room. The doctor at the hospital could see the splinter in her eye, but could not remove it himself. So he called an ophthalmologist and asked if he could meet us at his office to remove the splinter.

It all started while having so much fun. I had built a nice high tree swing alongside the house. Our daughter loved to go out in the evening and have me push her higher and higher. She was fearless. When she got going really high she would clear the fence and brush up against the leaves and blossoms of an apple tree. Night after night she loved to have her Daddy go push her on the swing, higher and higher.

I got carried away one night, pushing her higher and higher. Too high. She swung up into the apple tree far enough that a branch brushed against her face. It didn’t hurt at the time, but we slowed down a bit so she wouldn’t get hurt. When she got done swinging we went in the house to rest. She complained that her eye hurt, like something was in it. I remembered the branches of the apple tree brushing her face so I tried to look around in her eye to remove whatever was lodged in there. But I couldn’t find anything. She was tough and didn’t want to complain, but I could tell it hurt pretty bad. She was starting to cry. And I was feeling worse and worse. I looked again and still could not find anything around the edge. Somehow I noticed the tiniest little sliver in the white part of her eye, so small that I could hardly believe that it could cause so much pain. But every time she blinked it scratched her eyelid, and she was pretty miserable.

So we headed to the hospital, not knowing what else to do. It was stuck in there pretty good, because they couldn’t get it out with a cotton swab. So that’s when we headed to see the eye doctor. I expected he would have some way to clamp her head still, and use some special tweezers to get it out. But no, he told her to hop up in the chair and started showing her the little drill he was going to use to drill out the sliver. She wasn’t the least bit afraid. She was so trusting, and so very happy. She was confident that this man knew exactly how to get rid of the pain in her eye.

And just like that, he was done. She was smiling, and they were kidding around, looking at the little splinter resting on the tip of his finger.

“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? First take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently.” (Mt 7:4-5; Gal 6:1)

Helping my brother to remove sin’s hold from his life is likened to removing a splinter from his eye. The pain of that spiritual splinter can be intense – guilt, shame, failure, discouragement. Whoever would remove the splinter of sin, though, must be like a surgeon, filled with love, skilled in God’s truth, full of the Spirit. Love changes hearts. Truth changes direction.