Set Your Eyes On Things Beyond

“The eye is the lamp of the body…” (Matthew 6.22)

Sometimes I’ll sit out on our back porch by the lake and reflect. Crickets chirp from the reeds beyond the water as a drip from the night’s rainfall ponders down the gutter. The black as I look out, at this time of night, or as your Mom and I peer through the window from inside, fills an extra-inky darkness, because I know what is just beyond the veil of night I see pulled over our gorgeous pondview.

There is deep beauty here. Profound, majestic, transcendent, breathtaking. But now seemingly brooding because of the dark cloak covering the beauty that lies beneath.

Sometimes I’ll sit and watch people as they ponder along my back porch stoop, cutting a path toward the solid earth, searching for the next gutter. Timber creaks beneath their eyes, bearing the weight of trails and pools of dreams and disappointments that somehow never ran off. The blackness, that inky black, is much deeper here, because in their eyes I sense something beautiful lies beneath. Something born of God but twisted and tainted by man.

It broods, but only because it is transcendent despite its darkness. God placed his nature here, majestic and otherworldly.

In the light of day it would be profound.

Breathtaking even.

God wants to shine his light of day in every one’s eyes. To reveal his transcendent majesty hidden there. Jesus says,

The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. Matthew 6.22

Our eyes determine our light. If our eyes are good — clear — they illuminate the glory of God within. They bring light and life to our bodies. To our hearts. What we set our eyes on matters — it determines our light.

The verses before explain,

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6.19-21

Are your eyes set on a passion and pursuit of the glory and goodness of God? To know him and his righteousness in purity, joy, and incredible hope? Or are they set on the rotting treasures of the world — for money, unhealthy relationships, your own glory or popularity or gain?

What you set your eyes on determines your light. Whether God in all his glory, celebrating a relationship of joy with him, basking in the radiance of his Son. Treasure enduring forever. Or revealing rotting and stolen and destroyed treasure, rusting trinkets. Transcendent, but lost in the inky-blackness.

The funny thing about eyes is you can see through them both ways, not just with them, but into them. If you’re watching, in people’s eyes you’ll see their light, whether good or bad. Sometimes behind them I see worldly passions, a heart flirting with sin, a pursuit of rusting trinkets. It’s a lot like the inky-darkness here behind the lake, a sense that something you cannot see but still see is cloaked just beyond.

Jesus says,

But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

Just like the black darkness covering the beauty behind our back porch.

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There is such beauty in your eyes. Such compelling, pure, joyous beauty; such a wide, breathtaking smile. It will always be this beautiful, this wildly intoxicating to Daddy. And to your Daddy God.

But you must choose to treasure what he treasures, to love what he loves, to seek after what he seeks after, to fill your body with light. To set your eyes on things beyond this world, to the glory of his Son. And the light of his Life will fill your heart and body — and eyes — with unspeakable radiance, as he gives life to the world.

The light is just peaking over the horizon now, Kaylee. The reflection of morning light in the still glow across the pond catches my breath. It is stirring and clear and compelling, illuminating every shade and subtlety of majesty its Maker intended it to reflect. It is awesome and glorious to drink in his image reflected in these waters. It is in your eyes, as well.

Here is our reading together: