Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. Luke 11:34
A couple summers ago, I was heading home from the Twin Cities in afternoon traffic, when someone was pulled over by the police on the other side of the road. I thought, Those flashing lights are distracting. That might cause an accident. I’d better watch the road. As soon as I looked back to the road, the pickup in front of mine came to a sudden stop. I braked quickly, congratulating myself on being an attentive driver.
My celebration was short lived though. It seemed like the world exploded as the guy behind me – apparently on the phone – slammed into me. My pickup was launched into the next car which hit the one in front of it, doing thousands of dollars in damage. Fortunately, no one was injured, but one distracted driver caused an impressive amount of destruction in failing to keep his eyes on the road.
This is similar to the illustration used by Christ in today’s passage. In it, he said that our lives follow our gaze. If we keep our eyes on the light, our body will be full of light. If though, we look to the darkness, our lives will follow. When, like Peter walking on the water, we keep our eyes on Christ, we embrace life. When we’re distracted, looking elsewhere, we sink into the waves of life.
We often have this errant idea that being a Christian means that God drives. Jesus take the wheel. God though, does not make us robots. Freedom in Christ means he allows us to continue to steer, asking that we follow his directions. Our job is to keep our eyes on his route, making our lives follow.
We’re easily distracted though. We’re driving through life with one hand on the wheel and one hand on our phone, literally and figuratively. We say we follow God, but in reality, we follow ourselves.
As Jesus promised though, our lives follow our gaze. If we keep our eyes on money, sex, food, drugs, appearance, status, or toys, we’ll naturally turn our lives in that direction, reaping the painful consequences. If though, we do whatever it takes to keep our eyes on Christ – reading, praying, and obeying – we’ll find the road to life, faith, and recovery.