Seeing Clearly through Broken Eyes

This morning my 8 year old brought me up short.  We were in the car, as usual, driving home after dropping the other two off at school when I got stuck behind a slow dump truck.  It was drizzly and the truck was nicely dropping dirt onto my car.  I complained under my breath and my son responded with, "Well, at least we're not walking!"

Wow.  Perspective switch.

I'm always amazed by my own tendency toward a negative perspective, a pessimistic view of life and all things in it.  I know that Christians should be full of joy and peace but after 24 years as a believer I still struggle daily with anxiety, frustration and depression.  I know I need a new perspective.

Jesus said it best in his Sermon on the Mount:
"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!" 

I can attest to bad eyes.  Without my glasses or contacts the whole world is fuzzy, formless and dark.  Nothing makes sense, I have to guess at what I'm seeing and fumble along.  Can the same thing be true of the eyes of my heart?  Jesus seemed to think so.

So what perspective should I take?  There are so many options!  But looking at the verse in the context of Jesus' sermon shows that the one He calls us to contains these things:

 - making him our only treasure
 - serving God as our only master
 - trusting him for all things and laying down anxiety
 - seeking first his kingdom

I will be the first to admit that I masterfully fail in all these areas on a daily basis.  I treasure comfort, I serve money, I'm anxious about everything and my own little kingdom tends to trump anyone else's.  So what do I do?  Will my eyes ever see clearly?  How do I cling to a new perspective?

"Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Romans 7:25a)

"You will never be able to find steady joy in this life until you understand, submit to, and even embrace the fact that you are weak and sinful....  Zechariah 3 shows us a visual picture of the spiritual truth that we possess in Christ.  He paid the penalty for all our sin by dying on the cross, and now he wraps us moment by moment in the embrace of all his righteousness given to us.  He is everything that we need, not just for salvation but for every day of our lives.

So what does that mean for you and me from day to day?  It means that although we sin with every breath we take, at the same time in Christ we actually possess all the perfection we need to please God.  Jesus succeeded in every way that have failed, and although we fall wretchedly short of the obedience we need and desire, he has obeyed in our place and given us his goodness to replace our badness.  At the end of a day when I can look back and see the many specific times that I have sinned in weakness or in willful rebellion, I can also see Jesus obeying for me and giving me his perfect record in each of those specific areas.  There is no other way to survive my failure.  I have been rescued, my sins have been dealt with decisively on the cross, and now God sees me as he sees his own Son, as a perfect lawkeeper.  Isn't that delicious and extravagant grace?

Enjoy this doctrinal truth.  Immerse yourself in it; delight and frolic in it.  It is too wonderful to be believed, and yet is is absolutely true."

 (excerpts taken from "Extravagant Grace: God's Glory Displayed in Our Weakness" by Barbara R. Duguid)

 I can't do it!  But Christ has done it for me!  So I fix my eyes on him, preaching the Gospel to myself over and over and over, repenting over and over and over, each time remembering what he has accomplished for me and marveling in it!  In this is true joy.