Focus: Spiritual Myopia

Text: Eph.1:18

"The EYES of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints."

Let me make three categorical statements:

*It is important THAT you see.

Blindness is neither a good thing nor a virtue. Elisha prayed for his servant to see, "LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the LORD opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha" (2Kgs.6:17). In this life, vision is vital. Vision is so vital that Paul had to pray for God to open the eyes of God's people to see their hope of calling and the riches of inheritance belonging to them. 

In this life, what you see is what you seize. You can only seek to lay hold of what you behold. If you can't behold something, how can you lay hold of it? The psalmist prayed, "Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law" (Ps.119:18). The need to see both physically and spiritually cannot be overemphasized.

*It matters WHAT you see.

God asked Jeremiah, "What seest thou?" Jeremiah responded, "I see a rod of an almond tree." Then God said, "Thou hast well seen" (Jer.1:11,12). What you see really matters. You can see, but see darkly or wrongly.

*It matters HOW you see.

The Lord spit on the eyes of a blind man, touched and asked him if he saw anything at all. His response was, "I see men as trees, walking" (Mk.8:23,24). He saw people as trees, but people are not trees. Again, he saw these tree-like people walking. The truth is that people walk, but trees don't walk. So this is the case of a blurry and foggy vision. It took a second touch from Christ for the sight of the blind man to be fully restored. Indeed it matters how you see. Clear vision is a necessity.

Myopia is nearsightedness or shortsightedness. Spiritually speaking, it is narrow-mindedness and lack of foresight. It is inability to see beyond one's nose. It is a kind of having a microscopic perspective that is bereft or devoid of total vision. After Lot departed from Abraham, God said to him, "Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art NORTHWARD, and SOUTHWARD, and EASTWARD, and WESTWARD: For ALL the land which thou SEEST, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever" (Gen.13:14-15). This is total vision - seeing from every side - all-round view. God promised to give him all that his eyes could see.

In Hebrews 11:13, we read about the patriarchs seeing the promises afar off. They saw the promises from a far distance, and they laid claim to them, and embraced them from a distance. Peter tells of those who, by lacking certain spiritual qualities, are "blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins" (2Pet.1:9).

Blindness is never a desirable thing. Lack of foresight is dangerous.

Spiritually speaking, self-centeredness is the reason behind myopia. The glass or lens of self can't see far or broadly. Self-centeredness makes one see microscopically, not holistically. Jen Lancaster said, "I think people tend to be very myopic and they don't understand how their actions impact others."

I pray God cures us of spiritual myopia, because we need vision, insight, foresight and hindsight in our earthly existence as God's people.

by Bishop Moses E. Peter