Heavenly Perspective

Matt 6:22 "The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. 23 But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness! 24 "No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. 25 "Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? 28 So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; 29 and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 32 For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

I spent the first 18 years of my life in Washington, D.C. Every now and then we would be visited by out-of-town family members or friends who wished to tour the city. One of my favorite places to show tourists was the Washington Monument.

If you went to the top of the Washington Monument, which is 555 feet tall, you gained a whole new perspective of the city, which I loved. Your perspective of the horizon was completely changed, and you could see for, (I’m guessing,) perhaps hundreds of miles in every direction on a clear day. You could look down and see the teeny little people milling around on the ground, and you could see the roof-tops of famous institutions like the Capitol Building and the White House. In short, you could see tons of things you could never see standing on the ground. (Ummm…duh? Pretty obvious, eh?)

This is what Jesus is talking about when He speaks of having a “good eye.” Sometimes we think of having a ‘good eye’ pertaining to our aim in target shooting, or perhaps shooting a basketball - but what Jesus is speaking of is perspective. He is speaking of being able to see things as God sees.

The marvelously wonderful thing is God DOES want us to see as He does, and to see what He sees. Were we to take advantage of the wonderful opportunity He provides to reveal to us His perspective, I’m sure there would be less sin in the world. There would be fewer examples of people taking advantage of other people.

One thing we would definitely understand, (that we really should already know,) is that God sees everything we do, and not only that, He has seen everything we have ever done. Clearly. Without any obstructed vision. He has the perspective of our lives that we lack. He knows what is going to happen tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that – and He knows the repercussions of the sin we are about to commit today.

If your eye is good you will see this. If it is bad you never will.

-Pastor Bill