Improve Your View

Journal 2005 01 15
Improve Your View

A total lunar eclipse occurs from midnight to three a.m. Clark uses the small sighting telescope on his sextant to improve his view of it. He comments that even though the sextant’s small scope was not as good as their telescope, it improved his observations “greatly”.

I was able to buy a pair of what are considered to be one of the best binoculars ever made several years ago for just over one hundred dollars, a fraction of their real value. I’ve written many times in my devotionals about acquiring the “improved view” available through world class optics. Their ability to allow you to see colors and resolve detail allows observations that are not possible with the naked eye.

This is not intended to turn into a physics lesson on optics, but to spend a moment considering our physical limitations that are built in by design. And then apply the same principle to understanding our spiritual limitations that exist by God’s design and the impact of sin.

Our eyes see a limited spectrum of light. It is exactly the bandwidth that we need to function on earth. If we saw all bandwidths we would be overwhelmed with input. Darkness would no longer be dark.

Our ability to hear has the same narrow response, too. We don’t hear the dog whistle and we feel the low frequency earthquake wave more than we hear it. Again, if we heard everything, we couldn’t make sense of any of it. Hearing “aids” help those who have damaged their hearing. Other “listening devices” allow us to hear sounds and conversations that would not normally register with our limited ability to hear.

Sin has limited our spiritual ability to “see” in the spiritual world. The flesh limits our spiritual awareness by warring against it. Both have the effect to muffle, insulate and obscure. God has given us spiritual hearing and seeing aids. Prayer and fasting and preaching and teaching from His Word are our binoculars and hearing aids.

Many have said that the view through the best optical instruments is “better than the real thing”. Seeing the world through God’s eyes is better than the real thing and allows us to engage the world outside His intentional design limitations. Used as designed, His tools allow the view of our world that He intended by His design.