Eyes of Your Heart

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Often, I get stuck in circle of thought.  This week I’m stuck on the words, “eyes of my heart.”  I’m struggling to understand this simple but complex phrase.

Assisi, Italy
I’ve used the term, open your eyes, but mostly in traffic situations when a driver may have frustrated me!!  Or when my husband is diligently searching our frig for an item and I casually walk up and pluck it from the shelf, open your eyes!  In kinder days, I open my eyes and catch a blue bird flying by.  Or I notice small flowers on the roadside, or the magnolias beginning to bloom.  My eyes are also open to see hurting people on the news and in my city.  I see division and anger.  

As I try to live with open eyes, I'm not sure I live with the eyes of my heart.  I have even arrogantly asked God to open his eyes and heal our world, heal those I hold close, heal the pain and suffering and division.  These examples of my pleas to God have a commonality for they seek a result.  A result that perhaps in my simplicity and self-righteous have determined to be best.  It’s a focus on outcome.  

And I pause today pondering if outcome is the measure of my faith journey.  Is outcome my end result?

Below are some words from Ephesians.  This letter, written by Paul, was to a young church, a group of true believers. “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, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.” Eph 1:18-19

There is but one result in these words, and it is: that we may know the hope to which he has called us and the richness of our inheritance as His people.  The end result is all God.  Opening my eyes, is not my hope or my result.  It’s becoming like Him to the world around us.  It’s having His eyes to see, His eyes to love, His eyes to accept the unacceptable, His eyes to love those who are outcast.  It’s having eyes that recognize all He offers us; all He has in store for us.

When I pray for my eyes to be opened, I wonder if I even understand what I’m asking.  Has this phrase become too common?  When I hear the quiet voice of God reminding me to open my eyes, what do I see?  Do I see outcomes, am I merely looking for results?  Can I, will I pause myself and see the holiness of God and His plan?

“It can be even harder to focus on things we think we already know.  What more is there to see?” 10-Minute Challenge: “The Starry Night’ by van Gogh, Larry Buchanan, NY Times, May 6, 2025.

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.  I Corinthians 13:11-12

Open the eyes of my heart Lord, that I may see you.