What Your Eyes Have Seen
The human eye finds no match for its intricacies. High-end cameras still can’t compare to the technology found in this tiny little organ. Photographers who capture gorgeous landscapes must grapple with focus, dynamic range, filters, color consistency, and brightness adjustments to match the scene that lays before them. Our eyes do this all in an instant.
With our eyes we consume the world around us, feasting in colors as they are translated to our brains, judging depth and distance, and even decoding the feel of an object in a glance. Our experience of the world relies heavily on the eyes that take it in. We watch the seasons change, identify danger, interpret body language, facial expressions, or take in the simple beauty of a landscape. The pictures our eyes take each day get filed away in our memory as strong visual cues that link our experiences in an intricate web.
As time swiftly passes, we can close our eyes and replay the images that have filled our lives—the sight of our spouse at the front of the wedding chapel, the hospital room that welcomed our first child, the look of joy in our three-year-old’s eyes, the last moment with a parent. The reels play through our brains thanks to all our eyes have seen. Our incredible sight guides not only on our physical body, but it offers important implications for our spiritual growth. We would be wise to remember what’s passed before our eyes.
Sight That Changes
The importance of our eyes saturates Scripture. From the first few pages we get a glimpse of the forbidden fruit in the garden that delighted Eve’s eyes. It’s clear the Lord knows what we see in his world affects us. He created us in this manner after all. As we were knit together in the womb, the Lord graciously weaved our frame to include a body that discerns the world through the gift of sight. And this gift holds great power. There’s a reason soldiers who return home from wars suffer through post-traumatic stress disorder: because the images their eyes saw imprinted painful images on their minds and the experiences they saw with their bodies changed their hearts forever.
Visual imagery remains a powerful force for us all. Memory competitors know in order to remember something better you must combine the facts with a visual cue. Whether you see it with your eyes in the world, or whether you make up a picture to “see” in your head, the facts and information will stick further and longer with a picture. Power resides in our eyes.
Of course, our Creator knows this, and it’s why he includes countless admonitions to the eyes throughout the Bible. In Deuteronomy, the Israelites found themselves set free from their Egyptian slaveholders. They survived the chaos and destruction of the ten plagues enacted on the land. Now they followed the Lord out into the wilderness, and he challenged them repeatedly to not forget what their eyes had seen.
Right before the people were to enter the land of promise, Moses reminded the Israelites to keep their souls diligently, lest they “forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life” (Deut. 4:9). He beckons them to meditate on all the great work displayed before them in their exodus, on Mt. Horeb, and in forty years in the wilderness (Deut. 11:7). They are called to replay the trials, the signs, and the great wonders that passed in their vision (Deut. 29:2–3).
God knew the Israelites were created as bodies and souls. Their physical experiences weren’t independent from their spiritual state, but together they were joined in unison. Nancy Pearcey writes, “Christianity holds that body and soul together form an integrated unity—that the human being is an embodied soul” (Pearcey, Love Thy Body, 21, emphasis mine). And part of our body—our eyes—allow us to see that which we must remember. The Lord uses our physical vision to affect change in our soul.
Of course, there are times that we fail to make this connection, for we need Christ to do it. Even in Deuteronomy, the Lord told the people that he had not yet given them “eyes to see” (Deut. 29:4). The prophets reprimanded the people of God by telling them they have eyes, but do not see (Jer. 5:21). Though they were gifted with a sight that saw the miracles and the goodness of God, they did not make this connection in their hearts. May we not make the same mistake.
What Have Your Eyes Seen?
We must ask ourselves the same question: What have our eyes seen?
First, we too, have seen the mighty works of the Lord in history. The passages in Deuteronomy exist for us—for the church, the people of God set apart for him—even in the 21st century. Their history is our history; Israelite history is Christian history. We haven’t gazed personally on the plagues or the parting of the Red Sea. But we have read the words, listened to the stories, and have “seen” the redemption of our God from the exodus, to the exile, and to the return to the Promised Land. Those old Sunday school stories of the Old Testament? They are the images our eyes must be careful not to forget.
Not only have we seen the redemption of the Lord, but we have seen Christ himself. Our Lord is so gracious that he not only revealed himself through mighty acts to his people, but he himself condescended down to us, to show us with our own eyes who he is. Jesus allowed himself to be seen, to be touched, and to be heard by humans (1 John 1:1). This truth was scandalous to the pagans of the 2nd century. Yet, we too, have had the opportunity to see God’s gracious condescension. We have seen Jesus, the radiance of the Father, the exact imprint of his nature through the pages of Scripture (Heb. 1:3).
By the Spirit’s work, Christ is revealed to us as we read his words and see his character, his authority, and his grace and love. We don’t have visions like the Old Testament prophets but have seen the son. And as Jesus himself said, whoever sees the son, sees the Father (John 14:9). We must not forget it.
Finally, our eyes have seen the Lord’s redemptive presence in our own lives. Each one of us can string together tales of the Lord’s mighty work—whether it’s in a life-changing event, or the smallest of answered prayers. Maybe you’ve seen the restoration of a relationship, faithfulness in a medical diagnosis, the long-prayed for salvation of a family member, or the return of a prodigal. Our eyes take in these moments, and they change us. Like the many different experiences in Psalm 107, we can recount the various ways the Lord has delivered us. Our eyes have seen miracles, and we must not allow them to be forgotten. They, too, are to be remembered, rehearsed, and revisited.
In a world where so much flits past our eyes, tempting us like the fruit in the Garden, I pray we may hold on to the mighty works our eyes have seen. May we gather close the images of the redemption of the Lord throughout the pages of Scripture. May the likeness of Jesus our Savior not slip from our minds. And may we dwell often upon the incredible miracles the Lord has worked before our very own eyes. The eyes are a powerful tool. Let’s allow God to use them to change us—body and soul.
Brianna Lambert is a wife and a mom to three, making their home in the cornfields of Indiana. She loves using writing to work out the truths God is teaching her each day. She is a staff writer with GCD and has contributed to various online publications, such as Christianity Today and The Gospel Coalition. You can find more of her writing paired with her husband’s photography at lookingtotheharvest.com.