To See or not to See

Hi, this is Cynthia Dowling, and have you ever thought that how you see things determines your perspective? Recently, well, in the last few years, I've taken up watercolor painting, and in the last year gotten more serious about it. So, I'm watching videos, doing a lot of practice painting, and trying to learn to think like an artist. For some, they seem to be born with this wonderful gift of thinking like an artist, but for others of us, it is a skill that actually can be learned. So, I'm trying to learn it. Watercolor is a unique medium that mainly uses the white of the paper for the color white, since there is not an opaque white watercolor paint. Yes, outside the medium there are paints that work, like gauche, but if you stick with just watercolor, the white of the paper becomes your choice for white. So, when painting clouds with watercolor, you paint the blue part of the sky only! Isn’t that interesting? Your mind must be trained to see the blue of the sky instead of the white clouds. Now I've been a cloud watcher for a long time. As a child, I would look up at the sky or lie on my back, finding all kinds of animals, giants, and fanciful creatures in the cloud shapes. So teaching my mind to look at the blue of the sky instead of at the clouds is a real trick. The art term for being able to focus on the blue instead of the cloud is called looking at the “negative space.”

You know, spiritual sight is very similar to learning to see the blue of the sky, the “negative space.” My physical eyes want to see what interests me, the clouds; but God wants to give me a broader perspective, a sight needed to paint heavenly clouds, so to speak. He wants to teach me how to walk by faith, to know his ways, to have an eternal perspective, so I can function in this world while grasping how the eternal encompasses this life. He wants to teach me to see “everlasting space.” God wants to teach me my life’s significance in the eternal sphere and my life’s eternal purpose. This life is a bit like a cloud in the sky or as Scripture constantly reminds us, a flower in the grass—here today and gone tomorrow, a vapor. And although it doesn't seem like it, this life will be swallowed up in an eternity somewhere. And if you’ve truly trusted Christ as Savior from your sin, you can learn to see “everlasting space.”

Is it easy to see “negative space” for one who doesn't think like an artist? Not really, but with perseverance and determination anyone can add this ability to his skill set. Is it easy to see “everlasting space” for one whose sight is centered on this earth? No, not really. It comes only by a true shift of heart desire to look up spiritually to be able to see “everlasting space.” I am often reminded of the section in Part 2 of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, when Interpreter shows Christiana and her children an instructive room in his house. Listen to this excerpt:

“...the Interpreter takes them apart again, and has them first into a room where was a man that could look no way but downwards, with a muck-rake in his hand. There stood also One over his head with a celestial crown in His hand, and proffered him that crown for his muck-rake; but the man did neither look up, nor regard, but raked to himself the straws, the small sticks, and dust of the floor. Then said Christiana, I persuade myself that I know somewhat the meaning of this; for this is a figure of a man of this world, is it not, good sir?

INTER. Thou hast said the right, said he, and his muck-rake doth show his carnal mind. And whereas thou seest him rather give heed to rake up straws and sticks, and the dust of the floor, than to what He says that calls to him from above with the celestial crown in His hand, it is to show that heaven is but as a fable to some, and that things here are counted the only things substantial. Now, whereas, it was also showed thee, that the man could look no way but downwards, it is to let thee know that earthly things, when they are with power upon men’s minds, quite carry their hearts away from God.

CHRIST. Then said Christiana, O deliver me from this muck-rake!

INTER. That prayer, said the Interpreter, has lain by till it is almost rusty. ‘Give me not riches,’ is scarce the prayer of one of ten thousand (Prov. 30:8). Straws, and sticks, and dust, with most, are the great things now looked after.”

Are we caught up in muck-raking? Are the “straws, and sticks, and dust,” the great things of this life with us, instead what is truly eternal? You may wonder what is unquestionably eternal. God, in His Word, tells us what is absolutely eternal, the first being His eternal Word. Both the books of Isaiah and 1 Peter state that God’s Word endures forever. (Isa 40:8, 1 Pet 1:25) Since God states that His Word is eternal, it is our source for the eternal—eternal thinking, eternal perspective, and eternal vision. For God’s type of thinking, it is an acquired skill for all. The Bible tells us that not one of us thinks like God, so we don't have His perspective and really we can’t have it, unless we ask Him to give it to us. The psalmist David wanted this spiritual vision, and in Psalm 119, the Holy Spirit gives him this prayer to pray: “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.” (Psalm 119:18) So, if we pray for spiritual “eyes to see” as we study God's Word, will we get eternal perspective? Yes, but just like anything else, the perspective switch doesn't happen overnight. But, by continuing in prayer and the study of God's Word, you will start to see shadows and then glimpses and then the reality of “everlasting space,” as you believe what God says and walk more and more by faith, which is believing without seeing. And God is so good to give us a teacher, His Holy Spirit, and the Bible tells us His Spirit will guide us into all truth, the eternal truth of God.

Let’s pray with Christiana, “O deliver me from this muck-rake!” and lift up our eyes to our eternal God and ask Him to give us spiritual “eyes to see” His eternal way of thinking and His supernatural sight to see “everlasting space.” Also, let’s learn eternal perspective as the Apostle Paul did and not fixate on “. . . the things which are seen, but on the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:18)