Blind Vision

To be honest, my heart blurs my vision. My anger against others keeps me from seeing clearly. Instead of looking for reasons to rejoice in them, I look for reasons to feed my resentment. I look for ammunition against my brothers and sisters so I can confirm that I was right about them all along.

And guess what, I never fail to find that ammunition. Nor do people ever fail to find ammunition against me if they look for more than a moment.

Do you know why we look for fault in others? It’s so we won’t have to notice our own faults. Looking for impurities in someone else keeps me from noticing my own impurities, including my impure motives.

We look for the bad in others, something that’s usually not all that hard to find, then we can feel better about ourselves. And we try to make ourselves look as good as we can in the eyes of others by hiding our own faults. We put our religious good deeds on display so no one will see our misdeeds, in hopes that others will feel better about ourselves.

We usually hide our impurities under a lot of false veneer, good looking good works that we do more for our own good than anyone else’s. But all that does is mask our impurities and distort our vision of God. We’re no longer looking to Him to be our Savior because we’re too busy trying to save ourselves.

But if, by the Holy Spirit’s power, we can get our eyes off of us and fix our eyes on Jesus; we will see that our good works are not necessary for our purification. Jesus has already purified us by His good works and His sacrifice on the cross. And appreciating His work for us, we will appreciate His work for others.

Our good works will be transformed so they’re not for our good but for the good of others. We’ll begin to look at others with an eye for building them up not tearing them down.

Focusing on the purity Jesus provides, we’ll notice that our motives become more and more pure. And, instead of people seeing us so much, they’ll begin seeing more of God when they look our way. Why? Because we won’t be pointing to ourselves and we won’t be pointing out the faults of others. We’ll be pointing the way to Jesus.