Light Makes a Difference!

It was our first train ride in India and one we would never forget. We were heading to a conference in South India, and we had the privilege of traveling with our first mentors in India, the Satyavratas. Our train departed from Bangalore in the evening, and we were to sleep overnight on individual, assigned berths before arriving the next morning in Cochin, Kerala.

The journey went well until the middle of the night when I needed to make a trip to the toilet. I rose, put on my shoes, and sauntered out of the dark compartment to a lit-up area between the train cars where the toilets were located. 

When I returned to our compartment, I became confused in the dark. When I reached my bed, someone was sleeping there. Realizing I was in the wrong place, I quickly backed away. Then I checked the next compartment area, but the beds were full there also. So, I peeked in another couple of areas, desperately trying to find my berth. 

By this time my eyes had begun to adjust better to the darkness of the compartment, and I somehow managed to check again in the first place I had looked. To my amazement I saw the most beautiful woman in the world lying on my bed! My newly-adjusted eyes helped me recognize my wife, who had slipped down from her upper bunk to my lower berth, so she could better guard my laptop, which I had left on my bed when I went to the restroom. (We had been warned many times about thievery on the trains, specifically of laptops.) 

My eyes adjusting to the darkness made a big difference in finding my seat and in grasping what had happened. Whether in the light or in the dark, seeing well is extremely important! Spiritual perception is also vital in life. Daily, the way we see things influences decisions we make that have eternal impact for good or bad. What we see often determines who we will be. The way we view greatly impacts what we do.

To see better, believers need God’s help, and He wants to help us see well as we navigate the challenges of life. Our major instruction for seeing like God comes from God’s Word, the Bible. We perceive better when we seek to have a biblical worldview. God’s Word also helps us to interpret things we see and to place them in context. God’s Word also helps us to see people the way God does. It helps us value them with His priorities.

Jesus said, “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! (Matt 6:22-23). How we see our life situations proves critical to navigating life well.

May God help us to see as He does! 

*adapted from Nick Robertson’s forthcoming book, Seeing the Whole Elephant: The Essential Guide to seeing Reality from God’s Perspective