Weeds or Wishes?

“whether he be so or not, said he, I don't know: one thing I very well know, that once I was blind, and now I see.”

John 9:25  


One of my all time favorite stories in the New Testament is when Jesus encountered the man born blind without any eyes. Jesus, being fully God, did to the blind man just like He did back in the days of creation that we read of in Genesis 2:7, “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” Jesus took some dirt from the ground and mixed it with His own spit and fashioned a couple of little round dirt clods and placed them in the eye sockets of the blind man and then instructed him to make his way to the pool of Siloam and to wash his face. When he did the former bling man had a brand new set of eyes, a brand new persecutive on life. Oh that God would touch your eyes and mine today!


How much more joy would fill our days if we looked at the world around us through the eyes of God, through the eyes of His love? Have you considered the power of perspective and the role it plays in our lives and the happiness we enjoy each day? Oh that God would heal our eyes so we could see life through the eyes of faith! Would you consider yourself and optimist or a pessimist? Think about a donut for a moment and consider the words of Oscar Wilde who said, “The optimist sees the donut, the pessimist sees the hole.” How about people? When you see people what do you see? Have you learned to profile others based on what other people say, or how a person may look, or dress or smell? Do the clothes they wear or the car they drive or the home they live in fashion your perspective of others? It was the apostle Paul who penned the following words by inspiration of God, “Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:16-17).

As followers of Christ and people filled with the Spirit of God we are being changed from glory to glory as the mind of Christ is being fashioned within us as we resist being conformed to this world but instead are being transformed by the renewing of our minds. Like the apostle Paul we are learning to see people from God’s perspective, either saved by the blood of Jesus and in need of prayer, encouragement and support to keep going and growing or as people who are dead in their trespass and sins, blind to the things of God and in desperate need of Jesus as Savior and Lord.

I like what the polymath John Lubbock once said, “What we see depends mainly on what we look for.” It reminded me of a quote I read on Instagram the other day that said, “Some see a weed. Others see a wish.” I love the caption but it was the picture that accompanied those words that stuck with me even more. It was a picture of a dandelion. For a moment I was whisked back to my own childhood where my friends and I would walk through the park next to our house picking every dandelion we saw making one wish after another. Those were the good old days for sure.

Today many of those wishes from days gone by are being realized. On the golf course behind our house the dandelions grow freely and our grandchildren enjoy picking them and blowing on them like a birthday candle making wishes as they do. It’s one of the highlights of my Monday’s when I have the opportunity to spend the day with our preschool age grand daughter Quinn. As we walk on the golf course looking for treasures I enjoy watching as she bends down and picks a dandelion and says, “Opa,” wanting me to watch as she begins to blow the seeds off as if to make a wish. Yes, its true, some might see a weed but my grand daughter sees a field of wishes.

Everyone has a perspective about pretty much anything. Some are positive some are negative. I’m discovering for myself what Betty Smith wrote in her book, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, “Look at everything as though you are seeing it either for the first or last time, then your time on earth will be filled with glory.” One of the joys of being a grand parent is watching our grandchildren as they see things for the very first time and then contrast that against my understanding I could be seeing the same thing for the very last time. It’s a perspective that helps me to enjoy each day more.

What do you see today loved one, weeds or wishes? If weeds, invite the Lord to touch your eyes so as to help you see wishes remembering…

 
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good testimony. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.”

I LOVE YOU!