Telescope Eyes

From as far and as young as I can remember, when I became a Christian, in my heart, I knew that God did eye surgery on me. I saw that my perspective of life– of people and of Heaven– had been beautifully tinkered with. 2 Corinthians 5:16 states “From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.” As this verse reads, I never saw anyone the same; I did not see them as just fleshly physical beings, but beings with a soul, that after departing from earth will spend eternity with God or without God. I remember vividly in the 3rd grade of me sharing the gospel to my friends and talking to them about the love of Christ. I want to think that the desire to share Christ happened because I started to have, by the grace of God, an eternal perspective. When one becomes a Christian, they are graciously given a telescope and a new pair of eyes which allow him or her to see something very far beyond from what is physically present. That view is what we need to hold on to when the ocean of trials come ashore; for it is that acute and much needed perspective that will drastically change our thinking, attitudes, and hearts.

A life without Yeshua (Jesus), or a life full of trials and no hope, or a temporal vision, and most especially, a life full of distractions of un-important things can all cause us to not see what is really there. The enemy can cause us to not see what is really important like how light pollution blinds us to not be able to see the stars, which are really there and do exist. It is only when we decide to have a childlike faith that God graciously grants us with an eternal perspective. When this happens, the pollution dissipates and a clear sky full of gracious and glorious stars overwhelm us where we just want to stay looking up, but oh, how the enemy uses our human and temporal selves to weigh our necks down. I can grasp the operose to keep our eyes to the sky named “Future Grace and Glory” (as John Piper calls it) when things in life are being polluted with struggles, strongholds, unfulfilled deep desire, and unanswered questions. James opens up his epistle with this commandment: “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:1-4). You are able to count it as joy when you have an eternal perspective. Take Yeshua for example: Hebrews 12:2 says “who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” You can see the faith of Yeshua making itself visible through obedience by the power of the Holy Spirit, which first comes from an eternal perspective. Christ was focused on the joy that was set before him: future grace, and future glory. This is vital to have for it is this very perspective that Yeshua needed to treasure in order to have faith and obey the Father and to die painfully for the sins of the world. The faith and hope in future grace and future glory fueled by a great agapeo love, that was awaiting Yeshua after defeating death and Satan, was giving Him strength to persevere these horrific, unjust trials and also the ability to obey the Father! As stated in 1 Corinthians 13:13: “And these three remain, faith, hope and love.”

I was talking about a beautiful concept with my friend of an analogy between the wardrobe
and Narnia (as in C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) and the Christian walk. The
wardrobe is a small, constricted, uncomfortable space, but it is only when you have faith and decide
to obey and walk further into the wardrobe that it leads you into the wondrous, vast and wide
Kingdom of Narnia. Similarly, the Bible says that the gate of everlasting life is narrow (Matthew
7:13) and when one obeys His Word, which can only be by the power of the Holy Spirit, and not by
human strength (John 15:5), you shall then walk into a wide space (or open fields of freedom as in
Psalms 119:45). Let us not lose heart, and let us telescopically navigate our eyes upward heaven,
gazing our vision towards Yeshua– the perfecter and finisher of our faith– and let us retrospect to the cross, into all of His faithfulness and past grace and pull all of that in as we presently walk into His future grace. In by doing so, it will enable us to see everything– past, present and future– completely differently. It is with this perspective of how and why we can call the day that our Holy Savior died on, “Good Friday”, how chains and strongholds can break, and how it can ultimately lead us to sanctification, the goal for every Christian (1 Peter 1:12-15).