Lent Day 11: The focus of our eyes

Therefore we do not lose heart.
Though outwardly we are wasting away,
yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.
For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us
an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen,
but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary,
but what is unseen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:16

 Many things draw our attention. I often find myself scattered and distracted, don't you? Sometimes my focus wobbles or blurs.

 Yet the important things remain to be discovered. They call to us steadily amid the noise of "Do this!" and "Buy me!" and "What's new?"

 C. S. Lewis wrote a fascinating novel about human temptation, The Screwtape Letters. The premise of the book is that a senior demon is training his nephew on how to draw humans away from God (perceived as the Enemy) and his Goodness. Here's Lewis' observation on the effectiveness of distraction:

 What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of mind I call ‘Christianity And’. You know—Christianity and the Crisis, Christianity and the New Psychology, Christianity and the New Order, Christianity and Faith Healing, Christianity and Psychical Research, Christianity and Vegetarianism, Christianity and Spelling Reform. If they must be Christians let them at least be Christians with a difference. Substitute for the faith itself some Fashion with a Christian colouring. Work on their horror of the Same Old Thing.

The horror of the Same Old Thing is one of the most valuable passions we have produced in the human heart—an endless source of heresies in religion, folly in counsel, infidelity in marriage, and inconstancy in friendship.

 The humans live in time, and experience reality successively. To experience much of it, therefore, they must experience many different things; in other words, they must experience change. And since they need change, the Enemy (being a hedonist at heart) has made change pleasurable to them, just as He has made eating pleasurable. But since He does not wish them to make change, any more than eating, an end in itself, He has balanced the love of change in them by a love of permanence.

 He has contrived to gratify both tastes together in the very world He has made, by that union of change and permanence which we call Rhythm. He gives them the seasons, each season different yet every year the same, so that spring is always felt as a novelty yet always as the recurrence of an immemorial theme. He gives them in His Church a spiritual year; they change from a fast to a feast, but it is the same feast as before.

 What do you think of that? Have you ever been caught up in a religious fad or confused by a new theology? Yes, so have I! But I've found reading great chunks of God's Word helps me maintain focus and balance.

 Let's determine to keep our eyes on Jesus. Our target must remain Christ-likeness in character and action.

What are you shooting for today?

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