"healthy Eyes"

“The eye is the lamp of the body,” says Jesus.

It’s health and soundness help determine our entire well-being.

In the first church I served as Pastor, there was a wonderful older couple.

They were salt-of-the-earth folks—simple, kind and faithful.

The light of Christ shone brightly in them.

And one thing they were known for in both the church and the community was their jail ministry.

It was something the two of them had started and led together.

They went every Thursday morning to the jail to lead a Bible study and to pray with the inmates.

They made friends with them.

They had birthday parties for them.

They wrote letters—thousands and thousands of letters over the years—to people in prison and out of prison.

They invited ex-convicts into their home for supper and for holidays.

They did this faithfully for nearly thirty years and many lives were transformed as a result.

What was it like to see the world through their eyes?

Many of us might look at people in jail and see only criminals, thugs, delinquents, predators, dangers to society.

This couple looked at those very same people and saw something quite different.

They saw human beings made in God’s image…

…men and women whom Christ died to save.

Men and women whom Christ is more than able to transform—just as He had been able to transform and was continuing to transform them.

In the section, before these two short verses, Jesus is talking about storing up treasures on earth versus treasures in heaven.

And in the section right after this, Jesus says: “No one can serve two masters…you cannot serve both God and money.”

And so, we can kind of see what Jesus is getting at here, but He’s talking about much more than money.

It’s about in what or in Whom we place our trust.

It’s about what we are training our eyes on.

“If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light.”

The Greek used to describe a “healthy eye” implies generosity.

And the Greek word used to describe an “unhealthy eye” implies stinginess.

If I’m seeing the world through an unhealthy eye I will take on a posture of scarcity.

If I’m seeing the world through a healthy eye I will take on a posture of abundance.

I will look around the world and see all that God is doing.

I will see the possibility.

I will see the potential.

I will see the excitement and adventure in being a part of what God is doing.

I will be filled with love for God and neighbor.

And that will cause me to want to give of myself.

In other words, if I have a healthy eye I am going to be generous, I’m going to volunteer to help others, I’m going to give lavishly.

But if I have an unhealthy eye that will make me think that there is not enough to go around…

…and that everyone is going to hurt me…

…they are out to get me and my stuff…

…and so, the last thing I want to do is give…

…and that makes me un-generous or selfish or stingy.

Or as one theologian has put it: “It is a life turned in on itself and focused on the preservation of oneself.

The unhealthy eye robs life from the other in order to build up its own life, and darkness closes in.”