Change my focus, Lord!

The Focus of Faith

In one of the photo albums from my years in Ecuador is a close-up of a big scorpion on a window screen. I know what was beyond that ugly thing--a green lawn set about with palm trees, a garden of pineapples, a sweep of pasture land, and then the curve of a wide river. The photograph knows nothing of all that. The photographer had focused on the scorpion. He got a very good picture of a scorpion. The eye of the camera saw nothing else.

The eye of faith looks through and past that which the human eye focuses on. Faith looks at the facts--even the ugly ones (remember Abraham who looked at his wife's barrenness and his own impotence)--but does not stop there. It looks beyond to the beauty of things the human eye can never see--things as invisible as the palms and the pineapples are in my photograph.

When the eye of the heart is fixed on the world and the self, everything eternal and invisible is blurred and obscure. No wonder we cannot recognize God--we are studying the scorpion. Instead of gazing at Him in all his majesty and love, we peer at the screen, horrified at what we see there.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Make my heart pure, Lord, that I may will to do your will. Give me the courage to see my world with all its evil and pain, but change the focus of my life.

Lord Jesus, make Thyself to me
A living, bright reality,
More present to faith's vision keen
Than any outward object seen,
More dear, more intimately nigh
Than e'en the sweetest earthly tie.
--(J.B. French)

by E. E.