Matthew 5:8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
“Stop, Look and Listen” was a phrase that I learned growing up when crossing the street. PAUSE – and don’t be in a hurry. LOOK and pay attention to what you can see. LISTEN, because maybe a car can be heard but not seen. This is all about learning to observe.
Observation is a lost art and there are consequences in this lost art. Sherlock Holmes is fascinating whether that means reading or watching some version of Sherlock Holmes investigating a crime. The fascinating part is his uncanny ability to see what other people can’t see. It’s called the power of deduction. And he used it very well. I especially love how the great detective can tell you everything about a person by just looking and listening to them for mere minutes. Now you need to understand that the deduction doesn’t work unless your eyes are open and trained for looking at the obvious.
We use phrases all the time, like it was right in front of my nose. Which implies that if I had really been looking, I probably would’ve seen what I’d lost. I get the idea in reading the New Testament that often Jesus spoke plainly about life, but many people heard only what they wanted to hear. The Sermon on the Mount is amazing and full of many teachings from Jesus. It is in Matthew chapters 5 through 7, and Jesus is teaching a multitude of people on a variety of subjects. It’s almost like school is in session, listen up. In the center of this sermon on the Mount, Jesus says something profound about observation. In Matthew 6:22-23, He says this: “the eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”
In the middle of perhaps the most famous sermon ever given, Jesus talks about the power and importance of observation. It’s a subtle encouragement to make sure your eyes or your ability to see and understand is working, or is healthy, or is sharpened. Now, observation is not the end in itself. Jesus is saying that it’s through the eyes that light comes into your life. If you don’t see what’s going on, or in particular, what Jesus is doing and has done, you will be left in darkness. That was the regular position of the religious elite in Jesus’s day. They never did get it. It was all darkness to them because they refused to see how Jesus saw people, even though it was right in front of their noses.
Let’s use our eyes and read the truth, understand the truth, meditate on the truth and live the truth. It starts with using our eyes.