I fear the shadows no more

Open the eyes of their hearts, and let the light of Your truth flood in. Shine Your light on the hope You are calling them to embrace. Reveal to them the glorious riches You are preparing as their inheritance. (Ephesians 1:18 VOICE)

Open eyes are the product of God's action in our lives. In spite of all our searching, trying to uncover the "unknown", we cannot see God unless he gives us the vision by which we behold him. True "spiritual sight" is not like natural sight - it is received and interpreted deep in the heart of man. The one thing which remains consistent with our natural sight is the need for light. Sight is really the receiving of all manner of light, complete with every hue of color that light carries. In a similar way, the light God gives into our hearts helps us see him in the fullness of his splendor - full of grace and truth, awesomely holy and fully righteous, good and just.

The hope we seek is not found in darkness - by groping around with the "best" sight we can muster on our own. It is found when the spotlight of his grace begins to focus on the emptiness of our lives without him. There is nothing more revealing than a spotlight. It zeros in on the object in the path of the light and every iota of what is in the path of that light becomes evident. God's grace has a way of making what once was so unclear and kind of nothing more than shadows to appear as they truly are. When we want the shadows revealed, we have but to pray for God's spotlight of grace to reveal them to us!

Have you ever heard a friend say, "I just cannot figure out why..."? I know I have uttered these words on occasion and the truth is that in my own natural reasoning I am not able to see what I am trying to see - the shadows obscure clear sight. Shadows have a way of presenting things to us in a way that is totally different than the way the object really appears. I have a back-up camera on my vehicle and yesterday I observed how different my vehicle looks in "shadow" form as I was backing up. It was just a couple hours after sunrise, but even then the shadow was taking form. The shadow didn't even resemble the vehicle though. It is that way in our lives, as well. The things we see as shadows, present but obscured from clear vision, are not "true" to actual size, integrity, or intensity.

We often lose hope because we see only the shadows. God wants us to clearly see the hope we have when grace is allowed to reveal the true size of our issues. The things which loom as great forces determined to be "against" us in this life are probably not as intense as we might think. Natural sight has a limitation - it cannot see the lack of integrity these things actually have in the light of God's magnifying light! We cannot fully see until we seek more light. We cannot fully understand until God brings truth to light by his grace in our lives. We might just fear the shadows a little less if we prayed for light to reveal their true size! Just sayin!