Opening the spiritual eyes

When the servant of the man of God got up and went out early the next morning, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. "Oh, my lord, what shall we do?" the servant asked.

"Don't be afraid," the prophet answered. "Those who are with us are more than those who are with them."

And Elisha prayed, "O LORD, open his eyes so he may see." Then the LORD opened the servant's eyes and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. - 2 Kings 6:15 - 17

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. - 2 Cor 4:18

A lot of times, we get to see our physical surrounding, and that should be the case. Otherwise, you are either blind or something's wrong with your sight. But indeed, our mind tends to focus on what we see. I believe that's why Paul says that we fix our eyes on what is unseen. A lot of times, we do not see what God is doing in our respective lives and we don't see it in a more biblical and perhaps more spiritual perspective. Rather we can see it more in what we are experiencing physically.

Elisha's servant is a good example of this. I don't know whether it is Gehazi or any other servant that Elisha may have coopted. But most likely it would be Gehazi. Nonetheless, what matters more is that he only saw the physical siege and the physical lack of protection in Dothan. Elisha, on the other hand, was able to see what is unseen. This allowed him to stay calm when the army of Amran came sieging on Dothan.

What does this entail for us, especially for students who are Christians and have so much things on? One perspective that we need to have is to have faith in God. This is one thing that I noticed is not found lacking, but found being too reactive and dormant in Christian students, at least that's what I observed. Wenjiang said something during the DCLTP camp, which is sometimes, we wonder where are the rest of the Christians in our campuses. I think it's not to say that we are not seeing them, but we dun really see people working out their faith in class, and in school. Why? Perhaps, after some years of observation, I can dare say that it's because of the lack of understanding of the spiritual world? How many times do we see Christians so focused on their own work and neglect their own relationship with God, thinking that they can make it up some days later? How many times do we see that they prioritise things of the world more than things of God? When we do so, we are somewhat implicitly saying that 'God, we dun trust you in terms of our own future. We will do it our way.' It's not to say that these are not the things that God dun want us to do, but before we really go into our work or the worldly stuff, we have to ask ourselves, are we managing our own spiritual lives well. What purpose it will serve for our own spiritual walk if let's say we get too focused on our projects? If we say we are going to be salt and light in our project groups, then let's be honest with ourselves and ask if we are impacting our group mates' lives as we do all these. If we say we want to be salt and light in some overseas CIP thing, we need to be honest and ask if we are already salt and light in our own community. But it all comes down to faith, whether we are willing to let God be the Lord of our lives.

Another perspective that we see from this is that if we focus too much on what is seen, we miss the unseen. How many times I see that people focus so much on their benefit, and miss out what God is doing in His kingdom. I believe that the unseen is somehow hidden beneath the seen and we sometimes need to pause and look beyond the seen to see what God is really doing. We focused so much on the seen that we seriously missed out the deeper things of God. Ultimately, a Christian life is not one that is lovey lovey and just 'I love God and God loves me'. In fact, going a bit deeper than that, if we truly understand that God loves us, and if we truly love God, the things that we do would not have been so much focused on the seen. The servant focused so much on the outward and missed out the fact that what is unseen is protecting them from the Amran. Likewise, do the students nowadays just focus much on their own school works, on their own relationship with other people of the opposite gender, or what? I have nothing against my fellow Christians doing all these things but as I reflect upon my own life, I do realise that these are the same things that I face, school works and relationships. Nonetheless, I do want to make sure that what I'm doing is in tune with what God wants to do and will do. I can jolly well get myself into a relationship and take the time to rush my own thesis and projects but does that benefit and fit into God's plan in the end? As I reflect on all these, I come to see that Christians need to stop having temporal views of the world and start to see the world in more eternal light. That's not only for students but also for working people or any other Christians as well.

So the question is really are we opening up our own spiritual eyes and see what God is doing? Or are we so caught up with our own lives that we only see what is seen?