A Single Eye

“The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!” -Matt. 6:22-23

I can think of no more sensitive part of the body than the eye. I can cut, stab, tear, or bruise any part of me and endure, but a small grain of sand in my eye leaves me groveling and helpless. My one yucky memory of army bayonet training is to feint a stab at my enemy’s eyes. He will instinctively protect. Eye surgery is the stuff nightmares are made of, and most of us retain memories of some sort of procedure we hope never to repeat. Yet we all desperately need eye surgery of the most radical kind; to have our eye rendered “single.”

I borrow liberally today from a sermon John Wesley preached in his waning days when he labored under an acute concern for his followers as they were steadily emerging into new found prosperity and respectability. The sermon was a solemn and stern warning to his flock. “What the eye is to the body, intention is to the soul.” What has captured the intention of the human heart? What does it aim at? Where is it looking for fulfillment and purpose? Wesley hammered and hammered this theme with a desperate sense of urgency that seems so needful today. ‘If thine eye be single,’ singly fixed upon God, ‘thy whole body,’ that is, all thy soul, ‘shall be full of light,’ shall be filled with holiness and happiness. And again: If thine eye be single; if God be in all thy thoughts; if thou are constantly aiming at Him who is invisible; if it be in thy intention, in all things small and great, in all thy conversation to please God, to do not thy own will, but the will of him who sent thee into the world; if thou canst not say to … him who made thee for thyself, “I view thee, Lord, and end of my desires;” –then the promise will certainly take place: “Thy whole body shall be full of light:” thy whole soul shall be filled with the light of heaven; with the glory of the Lord resting upon thee. It is only then that we should be able to “pray without ceasing” and “in everything give thanks.”

We live, breathe, and swim in a world filled with distractions. The media is everywhere blaring at us, assaulting our senses with a Madison Avenue finesse that has perfected seduction to a high art form and science. Our wheels easily take us places wherever our heart desires and wherever our instincts for entertainment lead us. Our prosperity enables us to consume at a level never before known in the history of the world. Our driven culture plies us with activity upon activity consuming our time with amazing efficiency. It is also an increasingly visual world we live in where old timey circus freak shows, gaudy and cheap in their obvious trickery, are now replaced by digital special effects that are all but impossible to discern from real life. We now live with one foot in the Star Trek “hollow deck,” a roomful of space-age illusion. No wonder we struggle with having a “single eye” fixed on God. No wonder I do.

A distracted and dissatisfied soul is not a modern invention by any means. Wesley lamented in his day, the hungry soul, like the busy bee, wanders from flower to flower; but it goes off from each, with an abortive hope, and a deluded expectation. But nothing in this world has the capacity to satisfy the human soul no matter what great labors of pain or skill are taken to extract it. “A fool may find a kind of paradise upon earth, (although it is a grand mistake), but the wise man can find none.” Nothing in the realm of the senses or fame or riches or knowledge can replace the peace of home that is found only in God. Love the Lord with all thy heart, mind, soul, and strength. If this guiding principle be left to rust or disuse, to decay in the warm compost of our mall culture, then what is left to direct our understandings, passions, affections, tempers, all our thoughts, words, and actions? How great our darkness will be.

Those of us who cherish old British literature know well the recurring theme of parents who wished their children to “marry well.” Wesley fought tooth and nail against the very thought of it. Dare you sell your child to the devil? You undoubtedly do this… when you marry a son or daughter to a child of the devil; though it be one who wallows in gold and silver. Beware of the gilded bait! Death and hell are hid beneath! This was plain talk of the creeping darkness that comes when first principles are lost. Sobering words but somehow needful in the summer of our distractions.

Mercy and Truth,

Mr. Moe