Open Our Eyes

         I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, (Ephesians 1:18)

I’ve written before about the experiment with the vats and the rats. Rats put in a vat of water in the dark, who could not see any means of escape drown quickly. Rats in a vat of water in a lighted room, who could see a means of escape even though it was impossible for them to reach survived much longer. The ones in the lighted room were rich in comparison to the ones in the dark – rich in hope.

There are reports that in the Quran, it’s stated that the Muslim man who dies fighting for Islam will automatically be granted heaven and seven virgins. There are some who would debate the definition of the word “fighting,” but it doesn’t matter. The point is that the promise provides great hope to some. The same is true of the Word of God. It promises hope that hope includes being chosen, being made holy and blameless in His sight, adoption as sons, grace, redemption, forgiveness, and knowledge of the mystery of His will (see verses 4-10) He has, in short, promised us Himself. That’s much better than seven virgins because God doesn’t lose His status as a result of the fulfillment of the promise.

While Muslims are willing to die to gain their hope, sadly, we don’t see the magnificence of ours. We don’t understand how rich we are in hope, and how rich his glorious inheritance in his holy people is. We need prayer to see it. We might intellectually understand it. We get God, and we get to “get” God at least a little. But God being ours – our Lord, our Father, our brother, our friend, our master, our savior, our sustainer, our protector – doesn’t always seem to matter when we’re in a vat of water. We might want to trust and to hope, but it’s dark! We have our eyes closed. We need enlightenment.

Sometimes, God provides the light like a parent feeding a baby. Sometimes, the light is put before us and we pick it up with our fingers and smear it over our faces as we try to figure out where our unseen mouth is. Eventually, we are supposed to learn to feed ourselves on “on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4) But sometimes, we close our eyes and whine because we’re in the dark and can’t find the light, the food, or the way to escape the vat. Whether those eyes are physical, mental, intellectual, or spiritual, we need to open them, to see whatever light is available, and to use that light to look more carefully.