Make level paths for your feet and take only ways that are firm. (Proverbs 4:26)
Ears that hear and eyes that see, the Lord has made them both. (Proverbs 20:12)
It was horrific! A motorcyclist was speeding toward my car at about fifty miles an hour when I first saw him, and there was no place to go to avoid the crash. He hit the brakes, laid the bike down, skidded into my car, and lay there in the street entwined in his crumpled cycle in excruciating pain with a broken ankle. I knelt over him and prayed for his healing. I said over and over to myself and then to the law enforcement officer, “I didn’t see him. I just didn’t see him.”
Seeing eyes are rare in our culture. Oh, I don’t mean the 20/20 measurement your optometrist gives you; I mean eyes that really see. Not only do these eyes record what is viewed, but they are connected to a spiritual process of discernment which sees through and beyond images.
Principle: Without divine illumination, our eyes can never see through and beyond the thick darkness around us.
Non-seeing eyes are common. They are owned by those who look directly at evil and call it “good,” look right at impending disaster and call it “a challenge,” look square on at destruction and call it “a choice,” and look right at a demonic trap and call it a “great opportunity.” Proverbs exhorts us to watch—really see and really level—the paths of our lives. If we do, all our efforts will be firmly successful.
Principle: Failure to give attention to the way we are living is to surrender our destiny to the three enemies of success: chance, unexpected risk, and unrecognized stupidity.
The Scriptures make it patently clear that God creates vision at two levels. One is involuntary and the other voluntary. God creates “eyes that see” as the Creator of all things. We got the product of that creation when we were born. But God is also the Creator of eyes that really see—that discern, that penetrate, that see beyond, that aren’t subject to distraction or optical illusions. These eyes we get by acknowledging Him, learning from Him, obeying Him, and seeking His view of things.
Principle: No one is so blind as he who will not allow God to enhance and correct his vision.
I hope you can see this.
[from “Wisdom for the Trenches” by Dr. Larry W. Poland]