The Privileged Life: Good Eyesight

“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light.” Matthew 6:22

If you’re able to read this blog, count yourself very privileged indeed. Good eyesight is an enormous privilege we usually take for granted, until it starts to decline. 

My husband has been blessed with keen sight all his life…me, not so much. I had to put on glasses at age four, grew out of them for a season, then went back into wearing them for the past four decades. I’m grateful for eyecare from an excellent optometrist (Dr. Allyson Bohlman) who keeps a sharp watch on my retinas. Macular degeneration runs in my family, and I’m trying to stave it off as long as possible with ocular vitamins. I’m grateful, too, for the dollar store where I can grab a handful of readers to scatter all over the house!

Jesus tells us in His word that the eye is the “lamp of the body,” bringing light into our experience. He also explains, though, that if the eye is bad, our whole bodies are full of darkness…a great darkness. 

This message from His Sermon on the Mount is about more than just physical eyesight and blindness. Jesus points us to a deeper spiritual issue—what we choose to see and how we view the world. 

If we are blind to His love and presence in our lives, we stumble in darkness. If we fail to see our sinfulness and need of His salvation, we creep around in shadows. If we put on blinders to our brothers’ and sisters’ needs around us and their needs, we lose the blessing of being His salt and light to the world.

Psalm 101 admonishes us to put no unwholesome or wicked thing before our eyes. The call to action, therefore, is to fill our view with good and wholesome things…to look at the world through Jesus’ eyes…to embrace His vision of compassion and salvation for a hurting world and live it out daily.

When you open your eyes to read this, remember how privileged you are. Take care of your eyes. Fill them with wholesome words, views of loved ones and nature, and the outlook of Christ! Let’s gaze at Him in joy and thankfulness!

Thank You, God, for the daily privilege of eyesight and views of the beautiful world You have created. Help us not to take it all for granted. Thank You, Jesus, for giving us a vision of Your work here for us. Draw our eyes upward that we may look to You for all we need, for all of our hope. In Your name we pray, Amen.

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