Cross-eyed

 “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light.  Matthew 6:22

When I was a boy, I had a vision problem commonly known as "lazy eye." Less kind people called it being cross-eyed. Not a gentle description, but a valid one. With my good eye I could look directly at an object, but my weaker one would always seem to be gazing somewhere else. It appeared I was trying to focus on two different things. This could be disconcerting to anyone I was talking to or looking at. Fortunately, time and eye exercises provided healing for the problem and I'm now able to focus on the one thing.

I think many of us who profess to follow Jesus are also cross-eyed. With one eye we want to look at Him, His beauty, love, joy, gifts, words, and all His desires for us. With our other eye we seek to focus on what we want and desire. We want to focus on those things, be they people or objects, that are not Him. The end result is that we never fully see who He really is, or the complete insufficiency  of what isn't Him, but which we yearn for nonetheless. We are blind to the eventual destruction that is the result should we give our hearts to the pursuit of them. Just as my weak eye needed healing to see the one thing, so do we in order to see He who is the One. The only One. Jesus Christ. But where do we find the healing?

It's found in another kind of "cross-eyedness." Fixing our eyes upon the cross of Christ. If we dare to focus on His cross, our spiritual eyes will come into alignment and beyond the horror of the cross, we'll see His truth. In His cross we'll find His purpose for us and this lost and dying world. It was and remains His purpose to come to us. Into our darkness, our sickness, and our sin He came, and He comes still. Lifted up on that cross, He defeated every enemy of our souls. He did so because He didn't remain upon that cross. Death could not keep Him for life had claimed Him. Just as His life claims us...if we truly see and believe. 

His purpose was to conquer sin and death for all time, and He has. For all time and all people. For you and for me. To confess Him, see Him, believe Him and receive Him. It means we must be cross-eyed. The cross where death was defeated, the curse of sin broken, and His healing life released. 

Are you walking through life today unfocused? Are you seeing much, yet not really seeing anything? Not seeing Him? Would you dare to look to His cross, to the One? Everything changes at the cross. Will you dare to come there?

Blessings,
Pastor O