I Can't See

Bible Readings... Luke 11
Highlighted Verse... Luke 11:34-36 - Your eye is a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is good, your whole body is filled with light. But when it is bad, your body is filled with darkness. Make sure that the light you think you have is not actually darkness. If you are filled with light, with no dark corners, then your whole life will be radiant, as though a floodlight were filling you with light.
Thoughts... These verses very hard for me. I understood the basic point that was being made, but not why the point was being made this way. Specifically, why is the focus on the eye? Reading from several different translations didn't help much. Finally, I ran into an interlinear bible (english and greek) that provided a little help. The greek word Ophthalmos literally means eye, but it is also used metaphorically as the eyes of the mind or the faculty of knowing. But I still felt a little queasy about the why. I search through several commentaries with similar dissatisfaction. Finally, I ran into a commentary by David Guzik. He reasons that in verses 33-36 Jesus warns about inner darkness.

A. This section has application to both what went before it (Jesus answers those who thought His miracles were the work of Satan and those who wanted to see more) and what comes after it (Jesus deals with hypocrisy).

B. No one, when he has lit a lamp, puts it in a secret place or under a basket, but on a lampstand: Just as a lamp should be displayed out in the open, so all can benefit from its light, so the word and work of God should be displayed. But when Jesus displays His word and works, the religious people of His day won't accept them!

C. The lamp of the body is the eye: Even as a bad eye will make a person blind, so their bad hearts will make them spiritually blind. You have to be spiritually blind to attribute Jesus' miracles to Satan, to ignore the works of Jesus that are right before your eyes, or to live as a hypocrite. When you are in darkness, there are two possible reasons why. There may be no light source, or the darkness may be within yourself. Jesus says they know that the darkness is within themselves.

D. If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, the whole body will be full of light: When we have the light of God's word shining in us, when we see and understand the work of Jesus around us, we won't walk in the darkness of spiritual blindness.

How it impressed me... When I cannot "see" the meaning of Jesus' words and the reading is about hard-hearted Pharisees and Teachers of the Word, I must consider the possibility that I suffer the same disease that they suffered... and guard against it.
My response to God... Precious Saviour, open my eyes, my heart, my mind, and my soul to your teachings. Fill me with your Word, that your light may light my way. Purge all darkness that is within me, that I may be spiritually alive in you.