Matthew 6:22-23 “ The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”

I recently had the experience of having to change a light bulb. My closet light in my bedroom went out and thus I had very little light to see with as I tried to grab clothes off my shelf. The lamp in my room has a tiny 40 watt bulb in it and I have black-out curtains up so I do not get any outside light. I had to use a flashlight for several days to stack my clothes, pick out what I needed to wear, sort things, etc. After awhile I finally had enough and went to the general store and bought a new light bulb to change out with the old one. I now had light to see more clearly by!

This passage in Matthew is a puzzling passage. It follows right after storing up treasure and it precedes the passage about no one can serve two masters. In both of those passages, Jesus was very direct and clear about what He was trying to convey. This passage though was more obscured, to the point that it seems to me to be directed at His followers who would see through the eye metaphor.

The eye is what the body uses to see the surrounding world. The healthy eye sees Christ in all things and events and the blazing light that is Christ shows us everything clearly. The blind eye sees nothing and has no light, thus the blind eye can not see Christ. The blind eye is no follower of Christ. The sick eye waters and squints, it blurs and fuzzes and so the light that is Christ is barely able to penetrate it. This eye represents the person who has some experience with Christ or His teachings and so is able to see some of the light. The eye that once was good but now is blind or has had the vision impeded by cataracts or illness remembers the full light of Christ, but has turned away. The short sighted or farsighted eye focuses only on one aspect of Christ and cannot see the rest of Him and His works and teachings.

The eye is the window through which we interpret what we see. I need glasses to correct my vision to what is considered normal. When I put on my glasses, the world is sharper, the colors are brighter, and things are more distinct. I can see! But until I went to the eye-doctor, I did not know I needed glasses! I thought I was normal! Our sight fades and our relationship with Christ changes and we do not notice it. We need to have our vision corrected at times, just like I need to go back to the optometrist every so often and have my eyes checked and my glasses prescription updated so I can see clearly. Christ gives us the light to see, He reveals Himself, His world, and His blessings to us through our relationship to Him, but if we are not seeing clearly we cannot fully appreciate it. We need to renew our “spiritual prescription” periodically to get back to where we should be in our walk with Him.

During this period of time when the bulb was burnt out, I noticed that the little green light on the smoke-detector in the bedroom gave off enough light (combined with the light that came in under the door) that after a minute of being in my room I could see everything, albeit a wee bit murkily (and in shades of green). To me very well represents the world that the unbeliever lives in. To them that is normal and what the world should be like. They cannot understand those of us who have seen more, who have seen colors other than shades of muted and washed out green. But the only one who can change their vision is the same one who made their eyes. To bring vision to these people we need to pray for them and pray that Christ will give them sight. Then we need to let Christ work in us to minister to them appropriately. Finally we need to share our experiences and help them to learn to discern what they are seeing.

We need to ask ourselves three questions. What is our eye sight like when compared to Christ? Have we updated our prescription lately? What are we doing for those that cannot see or have their spiritual sight impaired?