A Word About,… Obvious

I had some minor surgery done last week on the top of my head. My blond hair (back when I actually had hair) and my fair skin were indicators that I would be a great candidate for developing skin cancers in my later years. Well, last week was a part of my later years, and a plastic surgeon carved what looks like his initials in the top of my now bald head to excise a small, growing lesion. Surgery was a total success, he said. 

The lesion on my scalp was obvious to my surgeon. In fact, he took a marker and drew a circle around it. He wanted to make sure it was easy to see, so he marked it. Under the bright lights of an operating room, he carved away what obviously didn’t belong on the top of my head. Anyone who sees me can attest to the obvious evidence that something needed a doctor’s attention, and the doctor knew what to do about it.

What wasn’t quite so obvious last week during my surgery were the invisible cells in the margins around that lesion. The surgeon couldn’t see those, so he sent the tissue he removed from the top of my head to a waiting pathologist for a closer examination. Another set of eyes to look deeper—beyond the obvious—to make sure the margins didn’t contain cancer cells. “A failure to go beyond the obvious,” he said, “can ultimately result in something much more ominous.”

Those words have stayed with me since my surgery. The word “obvious” comes from a Latin word that means “in the way” like something “lying in the road.” The irony is that what’s lying right in the road is often the very thing people step over or around. 

Obvious and ominous are only a few letters apart in their spelling, but they describe two very different realities. Something obvious is in plain sight, but something ominous may not be so apparent. The same reality exists in my life and faith.

Some things in my life may be obvious to those around me: my anger, or my pride, my stubbornness. Obvious, but hard to step over or get around. David understood that when he prayed, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me.” (Psalm 139:23-24) He was asking God to look at not only the obvious things in his life, but the margins, as well; the deep things invisible to the naked eye. 

Jesus told the Pharisees, “You clean the outside of the cup, but inside you’re full of greed and self-indulgence.” (Matthew 23:25) They looked pious, proper, polished, but beneath the surface of their lives, something darker was growing. The obvious had become ominous.

It seems to me that dealing with a bump on my head is not the same as addressing the frailties that obviously don’t belong in my mind and heart. Those kinds of invisible-to-me and yet obvious-to-God-imperfections can only be removed by God’s grace and time with The Great Physician.