by Pastor Don Schatz

I Can See Clearly Now

“You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on this SoundCloud Link”

“Without a vision, the people perish….”
Proverbs 29:18a King James Version

When it is foggy, things up close are clearer and things farther off are not.  It is like looking at the world with severe cataracts.  Spiritual vision can be very similar.  The spiritual cataracts of a ‘foggy vision’ can leave us straining to see, uncertain of the path ahead, perhaps even fearful.

We tend to like certainty.  We like the world, our lives in it and our prospects and future to be clear and unobstructed.  We can tend to take for granted the people in our lives and our relationships with them.  It is all a way of avoiding uncertainty.  It helps to alleviate fear.  We feel more in control.

But life isn’t always clear.  Choices we have to make are not always obvious.  The results of those choices are not always guaranteed.  Fear invades through the cracks created by uncertainty.  The fog that can accompany reality can immobilize us.  We long to see clearly now.

Still, we believe and trust in Christ our Savior.  We embrace his words to care for us.  We remember his teaching that if the Lord takes care of the birds of the air, how much more will he take care of us, the objects of his eternal love?  We see the empty Cross and Tomb of Jesus.  We understand that the ’emptiness’ of those objects of fear and death stand in stark contrast to Christ emptying himself of any claims he might justly put forth, in order to be our Savior.  In Christ Jesus, we can and do see clearly now.

Job, in the midst of his enormous pile of troubles, saw clearly.  “…in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes behold….” (Job 19:26-27).  Peter encouraged his readers with these words and reminder: “Though you have not seen him, you love him.  Though you do not now see him, you believe in him….” (I Peter 1:8).

This is our faith.  This is our hope.  This is our vision.  This faith enables us to see clearly–even Now!

Copyright Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado