Blake Barbera

²² “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. ²³ But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness” (Matthew 6:22-23).

 In the beginning, God made man and woman in his image. You and I were made to reflect the very character of God himself. His primary purpose in sending His Son into the world was to redeem and restore the image he first gave to us.

Jesus has come into an upside-down world and ushered in a new kind of reality and a new kind of kingdom. He is creating a new kind of people. And yet, the complete manifestation of these realities is still breaking forth. The world is still very much upside down.

Yet God, in His wisdom, is able and willing to repossess every upside-down reality – life’s heartbreaking events, greatest disappointments, unfortunate realities, and everyday struggles (including temptation and sin) – and use them for his purpose of image restoration. And one of the primary ways he does this is through correcting our vision. By re-orienting the way we see things.

Often, it is the shiny and flashy things of the world that contend the hardest for our vision, for our affection. Money, fame, affluence, renown. Like a brook trout that is captivated by a sparkly lure, we are often drawn to these things without even realizing that our vision – our affection – has been hijacked by something that is not what it appears to be.

When our eyes are unhealthy – when we allow ourselves to be captivated by life’s shiny “lures” – we are prone to miss what God wants to do amid life’s realities, including those which are upside-down. Namely, use them to make us right-side-up; to create in us a character more and more like his own.

When our eyes are healthy, and we see God for who he is – the ultimate source of goodness and joy and the only one who could ever truly satisfy us – he is able to use everything around us, especially and including life’s upside-down realities, to bring about his purpose of restoring his image.

God not only wants to satisfy every longing of your heart, but also, transform who you are from the inside out. It starts with where you cast your vision.

Take time to assess if there are things in your life that have captured your affection. If there are, ask God for forgiveness, then ask him to help you re-orient your vision so that he becomes the greatest recipient of your affection.