Eyes Right

Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are good, your whole body also is full of light.  Luke 11:34

Have you considered how much your life is impacted by the way you see things? Most of the time, I am convinced that the way I see things is the way they really are. The sad fact is that my eye does not see, focus and filter the way it ought to. My first problem is not my eyesight, but my worldview. My second problem is my culture which shapes my lenses. I generally attribute dark areas in my life to sin; here Jesus links them to the way I see things. This includes my presuppositions, my thought patterns, my assumptions, and my honed ability to see things in a way that suits my idiosyncrasies. I prefer a bad lamp to one that scatters the cockroaches in my soul. 

I have been pondering the lens through which my three children see life. I love their uniqueness, cherish their differences. At the same time, I want their life-outlook—their eyes—to be good because, despite their differences, there is a superset of truth that is greater than their personal uniqueness. I want Jesus to renew my lenses too, to brighten my eyes also, so that I “see to it that the light within is not darkness.”

A short while later (Luke 11:52) Jesus proclaims, “Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.” High-thinking rationalization of sin dirties the lamp, prevents our “entering” and, in our zest to prove we are ‘not that bad,’ heaps hindering rubble at the entrance to truth. Repentance and obedience seems to keep the inside and outside of our lenses clean, our path to knowledge clear. The key to knowledge includes progressive revelation, and this requires continued obedience. Those who determine to do God’s will know God’s will.

Therefore, if your whole body is full of light, and no part of it dark, it will be completely lighted, as when the light of a lamp shines on you.

Reflections

• How much do you long to have a clearer lens?
  
  
• What steps can you take to have greater “light within you”?