Today I will only cover two verses. But these two are packed with meaning. Let us look at Matthew 6:22 and 23.
“22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. 23 But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!”
These two verses are often overlooked, but at the peril of the ones who skip them. This is both a warning and an exhortation to look at the good things from God. What is Jesus saying in the verses? The light of the body is the eye. The window through which you view the world and all of creation is the eye. All of the information you process in your mind comes through the senses, but vision is the most important to humanity. What you look at informs your opinion, establishes your mood and gives you direction for your decisions.
If therefore the eye be single…. If you are healthy in both vision and outlook your eye can be called single, whole. If you are seeing well, and looking at things that build up your soul, your eye is single. If you look at beauty, if you look at things that bring joy, if you look at things that enlighten, then your eye is single, whole. Then your whole soul is filled with light.
But if your eye is evil, if you look only on things that anger you, that make you sad, that titillate your baser emotions of rage, hate and lust, then your whole soul is filled with darkness. How can you see in the darkness? You have no point of reference. Your entire outlook is gloom and doom. It is no wonder so many people are depressed. They are looking at darkness. The mass media feeds them darkness on a brightly illuminated screen. The words they read are darkness. The pictures they look at are darkness. And darkness fills their thoughts.
If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how deep is that darkness! How will you ever find your way to the light? You do not look at the light, only darkness. You don’t even know the light is there if you don’t look for it. You can’t possibly see it. You are in hell, “where there is outer darkness, weeping and gnashing of teeth.” All because you choose to look at only darkness.
What this means to us is that we have to focus our eye, our perceptions, on the good, pure, blessed, holy things of the world that is and the world that is to come. Then our souls are filled with the light God has shown upon us, and we can see to find our way to Him. If you are only interested in what piques your baser emotions, you are already in hell. You are in darkness of your own choosing.
Take care, sisters and brothers, to look for things that uplift your soul, that illuminate you. Look at the light. Then the light will be in you. Then you can show that light to others.
Look at the political arena for the most egregious example of people voluntarily living in a hell of outer utter darkness, weeping and gnashing of teeth. How many posts have you seen on social media where the poster complains the world is over because she didn’t get her way politically. It is always the fault of the other party. They say, “We must hate them, destroy them. For they have cheated me out of my desire to win.” It begins to sound like the tantrums of a three-year-old child in melt-down. That is ugly.
Do not display such ugliness. Instead, let beauty, love, joy and peace be the input into your soul. Then you will put out beauty, love, joy and peace. In the 1970s there was a saying among computer programmers: GIGO, that stands for Garbage In, Garbage Out. It means that no program can give you a useful result without useful input. The same is true for your soul. You can’t get love out of a soul fed with only hate. Think on that for tonight.
Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until September. If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. You can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.
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