The other day I was driving in my car and bring something before the Lord. What I heard in my spirit in answer to my question was, “If your eye is single your whole body will be full of light.” This is from Jesus teaching in Matthew 6:22. The word ‘single’ comes from the old KJV. The NKJV translates it below as ‘good.’
21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 22 The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. Matthew 6:21-22 (NKJV)
Over the years I have spent a good deal of time reflecting on verse 21 as I see our heart as the capacity to treasure things, more particularly either the things of the spirit or the things of the soul. At the same time I had spent little time on verse 22. I have casually thought of it as needing to pay attention to what we look at. This time what the Holy Spirit brought to me over and over again was the role of our thinking/imagination in relation to our looking. How and what we see is greatly determined by how we look.
To bring this point home let me share a story I read. This fellow described being on the subway and seeing a father and two young children get on. The children were bothering the other passengers and the father was doing nothing to intervene. The author made some judgments and decided to intervene and get the fellow to be a responsible father. He said, “Excuse me, I don’t know if you noticed but your children are bothering the other passengers.” The ‘neglectful’ father sort of came out of a fog and responded, “I’m sorry, we just came from the hospital where their mother died.” What do you think happened to the first man’s view? What changed in the situation? One thing only. How he thought about this father.
This took me back to Philippians 4:8. If we want our eyes to be single we need to be intentional about our thinking.
8 Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy – meditate on these things. Philippians 4:8 (NKJV)
If we train our minds to meditate, to think deeply on things that are noble, just, pure, lovely and good that is the filter through which we will see the world around us. How are things looking?
