Lord open my eyes

Lord, open my eyes, I pray as if my life depends on it.

The eyes of my heart do not naturally see this place as God sees, and even when they do see, they tend to shut again.  I am prone to sleepiness, to forgetfulness, to blindness.

Father, help me to see.

Help me to see something other than the bad news, the reasons to complain, the reasons to fear.

The eyes of my heart, if they are not forced open, they see only the holes where the gifts of yesterday were,

the empty calendar,

the cancelled plans. 

They see a catastrophic future, 

and a floundering present, 

with too much to be done,

and nothing I can really do that matters.

Lord, open my eyes.

God gives me time-outs, and He forcibly pries open my eyes.  Sitting in a pew, or under a sick child, I have been forced to SIT, to be still and open ears and eyes.  Now, sitting at home, I fight the stillness, but not as hard as I once did. I know that stillness is soul medicine.

Paul prays for hearts unsatisfied and blind like mine:

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power toward us who believe.  (Eph 1:18-19)

Our Jesus-- what He has done for us, what He is doing now, and what He plans for the future-- HE is what the eyes of our hearts so long to see.  He is the Gift to which all others point. He is the final proof that our God is a God of extravagant grace and boundless mercy.

There is often grief mixed in with the noticing, when I consider the flower or the daughter in bloom and remember the dust to which all things return.  The dust makes me afraid to notice, to open my heart to things that shall crumble.

It’s all crumbling, isn’t it? It always was.

But, stay with me. Look with me. Do not close your eyes.

Zoom out.

Consider the whole picture. Consider the God who created the world and entered the world and died for the world and is making all things new. Consider His Story, and our small place in it.  Consider your life given, by grace, and the new life we have in Christ, by grace, and the promises of life eternal that are ours, by the grace of God in Christ Jesus. 

The shadows become smaller as we see that they are temporary. 

He is making all things new.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up in Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.  (Ephesians 2:4-7)

What does God want to do with us?

He wants to use us.

To conquer the world? To overcome sin and death?

No, He has done that in Christ.

He wants to use us to show the world the surpassing riches of His grace. 

He wants us to live with open hands and open eyes, and to receive.

To see.

To take Him in.

He is the great gift, and each one of His other gifts are a drop from the same fountain.

Be still today, and notice.

Trace your fingers along the edges of the gifts.

Are there truly no gifts in your life right now? 

As you miss the gifts of yesterday, can you look up at the giver?

When you ask Him for sight, what do you see?

The tasks truly can wait while you let God restore your sight.

In Him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which He lavished on us.  (Eph 1:7-8a)

Lord, open our eyes, we pray, because our lives truly do depend on it.