Today’s passage is Luke 11:27-36. When a woman blesses Jesus’ mother for giving birth to him, he says those who hear and obey the word of God are the blessed ones. Jesus calls the crowds that come to see him wicked because they ask for miracles instead of repenting like the Ninevites when Jonah preached to them. He says to make sure the light in us is truly light and not darkness.
How is your eye the lamp of your body?
How does blessing Mary miss the point of Jesus?
“When your eyes are good”(34)
My eyes are not good. I’m terribly myopic.
I like their blue color but I can only see clearly when I’m close to someone or something or I’m wearing my glasses.
My eyes lost their good vision when I was 12.
That’s when I noticed how much my parents argued.
They didn’t do it much in front of me and my sister, but at night in bed they would argue endlessly.
Mostly I remember my mother never being satisfied with anything and blaming my father for everything.
Every night I went to sleep hearing them argue.
It was the worst kind of bedtime story.
I was horrified when I learned I had to wear glasses because only weak people wore glasses and the kids at school would make fun of me, which they did.
But I was strong and fast and most of them were scared of me, so I didn’t hear a lot of teasing.
But I still had to deal with it. As I grew older my eyes grew steadily worse and my lenses grew thicker.
As my lenses grew thicker, I saw less and less spiritually.
When my parents divorced, I saw that as a good thing.
I didn’t understand how bad it was until I came to Wooridle and I began to hear what Pastor Kim said about marriage.
I didn’t see that the affair I had with a married woman was adultery, a sin.
I didn’t see that because I got her pregnant I was the cause of her divorce.
I didn’t see my first wife was an alcoholic.
I didn’t see that having an affair when my first wife was dying of alcoholism was also adultery.
I didn’t see that making a child with that woman without marriage was a sin.
Mostly I didn’t see what a sinner I was and because I wouldn’t see who I was I couldn’t see God very clearly. My eyes were bad and my body and my world was full of darkness (34).
My spiritual eyes are much better than they were but they still don’t see everything clearly.
They still don’t light me up as a beacon of health and spiritual discernment.
Application: to listen attentively to the sermon tonight and pray I see clearly what God’s message to me is.
Lord, let me not be blind to the sinner I am. Give me your discernment to see and your Spirit to praise you.
