Your Inner Light
Tony Nester
Matthew 6:22-23
(Matthew 6:22-23 NRSV) ""The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; {23} but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!"
These verses from the Sermon on the Mount reminded me that my favorite part of biology class was learning about the eye. I was fascinated to learn how the human eye takes in light rays, bends them, and focuses them on the retina which in turn transforms those rays into signals that the brain changes into shape and color for the mind to see.
I learned that much of what we think is "out there" in objects in really "in us". Nothing is red or green or blue until your eye creates those colors inside your brain.
We say "seeing is believing" but we often get fooled by what we see. From the beginning of time people saw that the sun rose in the east and set in the west. It was obvious to them that the sun revolved around the earth. It took a revolution in thought to convince people that their eyes were deceiving them.
One time I got a new prescription of glasses and had severe headaches for several days. I kept thinking that my eyes needed time to adjust to the new lenses. But the headaches persisted and I went back to my eye doctor. He took my glasses, examined them, and told me the optician had mistakenly reversed the lens so that I was seeing everything upside down. He then explained that my brain knew this was the wrong way to look at the world and made my eyes turn the world right side up. All that work was giving me my headaches.
Jesus parabolizes the nature of human eyesight to teach us that the way we see the world depends upon the condition of our inner eye. The world is not just "out there". What we see "out there" depends upon what's going on in our hearts.
Our hearts make up our "inner eye". That is why we sing ...
Tony Nester
Matthew 6:22-23
(Matthew 6:22-23 NRSV) ""The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; {23} but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!"
These verses from the Sermon on the Mount reminded me that my favorite part of biology class was learning about the eye. I was fascinated to learn how the human eye takes in light rays, bends them, and focuses them on the retina which in turn transforms those rays into signals that the brain changes into shape and color for the mind to see.
I learned that much of what we think is "out there" in objects in really "in us". Nothing is red or green or blue until your eye creates those colors inside your brain.
We say "seeing is believing" but we often get fooled by what we see. From the beginning of time people saw that the sun rose in the east and set in the west. It was obvious to them that the sun revolved around the earth. It took a revolution in thought to convince people that their eyes were deceiving them.
One time I got a new prescription of glasses and had severe headaches for several days. I kept thinking that my eyes needed time to adjust to the new lenses. But the headaches persisted and I went back to my eye doctor. He took my glasses, examined them, and told me the optician had mistakenly reversed the lens so that I was seeing everything upside down. He then explained that my brain knew this was the wrong way to look at the world and made my eyes turn the world right side up. All that work was giving me my headaches.
Jesus parabolizes the nature of human eyesight to teach us that the way we see the world depends upon the condition of our inner eye. The world is not just "out there". What we see "out there" depends upon what's going on in our hearts.
Our hearts make up our "inner eye". That is why we sing ...
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