If you are like me, you have learned to be very skeptical whenever small children are quiet for too long.

The other day I was in my study with my 6-year-old and 3-year-old sons, getting a few small tasks accomplished. The older boy was busy creating crafts with paper. The younger, more rambunctious, boy was supposed to be doing the same.

While I was engrossed in some undertaking at my computer, he had secretly made off with a spare set of glasses from my desk. I thought he was using tape to put together some crafty creation, but he was actually completely covering my spare glasses with tape!

Before I realized what he had done, he tapped me on the shoulder, with my enormous glasses covering his little face, saying through a massive grin, “Daddy, I can’t see.” Not yet having looked at him, with my eyes still glued to my computer, I jokingly said, “Why can’t you see, are you blind?” He said, “No I not blind! I just need better glasses!”

Like my son, how many times have we caused ourselves to stumble and fall because we clouded our own vision? How often do we limit what our lives could be, because we close our own eyes to the possibilities, blinding ourselves to what God desires for us to become?

It has been well said that a blind man’s world is restricted by what he can touch. An ignorant man’s world is closed in by his lack of knowledge. And a great man or woman’s world is limited only by the vastness of his or her vision.

Among the things the new year brings is an opportunity to look beyond what we have been into the fullness of what God wants us to become. New Year’s Eve is a marker in time, a line in the sand, a bridge to tomorrow, across which we can choose to step into not only a new year on a calendar, but a new vision for our lives.

Make this New Year’s Eve more than just an opportunity to celebrate for celebration’s sake. Make it a celebration of the life that God has given us by taking the tape off of our glasses and opening our eyes to the vision of what our lives can be.

God is a God of second chances. This new year is an opportunity to move beyond what we have been into all that He desires for us to become.

Chris Surber is pastor of Cypress Chapel Christian Church in Suffolk. Visit his website at www.chrissurber.com.