Views

…“Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.”….. “So shall your descendants be.”

(Genesis 15:5, NKJV)

The gift of sight is universally valued as our eyes are a major part of how we take in information.  All our five senses feed our minds with information differently and on a basic level they all create a picture in our minds which we use to identify something.  An example is the gift of touch with helps us identify the shape, size, texture of something; while the gift of smell links very closely to that of taste. Each gift is uniquely valuable for our daily survival. Most of us know our surrounding through our eyes. When driving a car, we could choose to look at the front view which is where we are going to or we could look at the rear view which shows where we are coming from.  The view that we look at gives us information about itself and where we look determines to a large extent the direction that we shall take, this is both figuratively and also literally. Figuratively, we also have front and rear views that we look at in our lives.    The rear view reminds us of the past and often brings up things that we regret thereby stealing our energy for the moment.  It is no wonder that the bible reminds us to forget the former things and focus on the new thing that God is doing in our lives (Isaiah 43:18-19). The call is that we look ahead. The front view presents hope for the day and years ahead, the vision and the plans to work on.  This is energizing and gives us direction.  The element of hope is fundamental as it revives us even when the current situation might not be what we wanted.  Beloved, remember that what we focus on grows, we feed it with our thoughts and energies and so the importance of keeping the right view.

Our reference verse comes from a conversation of covenant that Abraham had with God.  God asked Abraham to look up and see the stars.  The fact that he could not count all the stars was meant to help Abraham appreciate the great multitude of people that God would give as his descendants.  God wanted Abraham to have a picture of the blessing He was promising, so that he (Abraham) would create a vision of the magnitude of his blessing.  This was a case of where what his physical eyes saw, fed into his heart giving him a vision.  Beloved, what we allow our physical eyes to focus on has a direct influence on our spiritual view.  We also know that it is possible, for two people to look at the same object and see different things.  It is also possible to look ahead and appear intently concentrated and yet see nothing.  What you see whether physically or spiritually is of critical importance.

Helen Keller said “the only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision”. Glory to God that vision is not limited to our physical eyes but is a product of our spiritual eyes.  Great inventions come from a vision that someone held in their minds and hearts and they chose to pursue it in the physical.  For our spiritual mapping, we are reminded to keep our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2).  Jesus is our truth North on our journey of faith and so we keep our eyes on Him.  Helen Howarth Lemmel wrote the hymn “Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in his wonderful face and the things of Earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.” This brethren is what we are called to do, to lift up our eyes, to see the one who is enthroned in the heavens, to see him in all of His glory (Psalm 123:1).  May we use our eyes to see more of God and His purposes on earth.

Thoughts:

Which view are you focusing on?

Do you have a vision?

How has looking to Jesus impacted your life?