THE GOOD EYE AND THE BAD EYE, Part 1

Matthew 6:22-23 NKJV The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. 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!     

     Jesus tells us that the light of the body is the eye. The eye gives us a sense of vision, an awareness of the things and happenings around us. With our eyes we are able to appreciate many wonderful things such as the myriad of colors and hues in our surroundings.
     In the above passage, Jesus talks about two kinds of eyes.

1.THE GOOD EYE
     In the Greek, the term “good” is haplous. In the King James Version, this term “good” is translated as “single” which is rightly so because the term connotes wholeness, singleness. The thought is undivided vision, that of having a single focus and goal. 
     Human beings have stereoscopic vision. One eye sees slightly differently from the other in terms of position (you can prove this by alternately closing your left then your right eye). What the brain does is that it pieces this information together so that a single image is seen by a person, with added depth (hence, three dimensional). People who are cross-eyed have double vision. They frequently bump into a lot of things and can easily become confused. Their walk is affected as they cannot walk straight. They find it difficult to go where they need to go. This is because their vision is not united. They do not have the proper focus.
     Similarly, while it is extremely important for us to receive a vision from the Lord on His purposes for our lives (the high calling of God in Christ Jesus spoken in Philippians 3:14), it is equally important for us to have the proper focus so that we are not deterred from hitting our mark. The question is how do we focus in a world full of distractions? A lot of things call for our attention nowadays. The problem is we do not have much time to entertain everything that would come to our mind! We need to sort out and filter what things would be most beneficial and fruitful. This requires discipline and wisdom from the Lord. May we be like David who cried out in Psalm 86:11 “Teach me Your way, oh Lord; I will walk in Your truth; Unite my heart to fear Your name.” There are many things within us that seem to go against each other. Sometimes, our mind says a different thing than what our spirit says. We need the Lord to unite our hearts, and bring everything within us into submission to His perfect will that we might walk in a way that is pleasing to the Father’s sight all of our days.
     Demas (in 2 Timothy 4:10) was a fellow believer and worker of Paul in Rome, and yet in the latter end, he has forsaken Paul and departed for Thessalonica because he loved the present world. We need to have a clear vision and an undivided heart. We also need the strength of the Lord and His grace. Proverbs 4:18 tells us that the path of the just is like the shining sun that shines ever brighter unto the perfect day. As we are clothed in the righteousness of God, we can trust that He will increase the light that we have, and our vision becomes brighter and brighter.

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