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Monday, December 17, 2007

Averting Blindness

I have had ocular hypertension for years, but my ophthalmologist thought I should start using eye drops. So I had a prescription filled a few days ago, and now at bedtime I drop a dollar—I mean a drop of medicine—into each eye. I have the cost figured out. After my medical insurance pays its share, I pay $60 for a month’s supply of the precious solution.
I’m sure paying through the nose to treat the eyes is preferable to going blind, but my Scottish nature makes me wonder if I could get away with placing one drop in the left eye one night and then a drop in the right eye the next night. I ha’e ma doots!
“Blind” was one of the adjectives our risen Lord used to describe the church in Laodicea (Revelation 3:17). He counseled the church to buy from Him “salve to put on your eyes, so you can see” (verse 18). Of course, the salve would cost nothing. Jesus always provides freely what a church needs if it admits its need.
Laodicea was famous for the manufacturing of eye salve. Therefore, Jesus’ mention of eye salve would grab the Laodicean church’s attention. But the response to His counsel was entirely up to individuals in the church. Jesus invited each individual to repent, receive Him and be restored to fellowship with Him (verse 20).
Does the Church today need to shake off spiritual blindness by giving Jesus His rightful place? You decide! I am fully persuaded we need to see clearly that the Bible is preeminently the Word of God and our sole authority for faith and practice. We also need to see ourselves as Jesus sees us and view the world as lost.
Whenever I preached at Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago, I observed a small, but significant, sign on the pulpit: “Sir, we would see Jesus.” I believe people in our churches and everywhere else need to see Jesus, and Christians need to “look at the fields. They are ripe harvest (John 4:35).

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