The Eye of the Beholder

I'm sure you have heard it said, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." There are certainly elements of this statement which are true. Afterall, what we see and the way we respond to what we see in very subjective.

All of life is in the eye of the beholder. On April 8th millions of people in Mexico and the United States had the opportunity to view a solar eclipse. The total solar eclipse was visible over parts of Mexico, 15 U.S. states and eastern Canada. Other states experienced a partial eclipse. The eclipse started on Mexico's Pacific coast at just after 11 a.m. PDT and traveled across the U.S. and into Canada. It left North America around 5:19 EDT.

What people saw related to the solar eclipse was dependent on how they viewed it. The beauty was definitely in the eye of the beholder. Without proper equipment looking directed at the eclipse could cause serious damage to the eye. Viewing equipment was essential to get an unrestricted view. Locality was another factor in what people saw. Those fortunate enough to be in the path of total eclipse were able to view the sun totally obscured by the moon. People described what they saw as awesome, incredible, astounding, breath-taking, etc. Some who viewed the total eclipse said it was a very spiritual experience. One mother and son separated by hundreds of miles viewed the total eclipse hours apart. They were on the phone with each other at the very moment that the mother viewed the total eclipse. At the moment the mother saw the eclipse while talking to her son, she said she felt a special connectedness to him. He said he felt the same connection to her.

With millions of people viewing the total eclipse, no doubt there were professing atheists among the viewers. How did atheists view the eclipse compared to Christians? If I had been in the path of a total eclipse and viewed it, I would have seen an unusual phenomenon involving two heavenly objects both created by God.

"Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these things, who brings out their host by number; He calls them by name, by the greatness of His might and the strength of His power; Not one is missing" (Isaiah 40:26).

This perspective is impossible for an atheist because there is no Creator. Above I mentioned a mother and son who felt a special connectedness to each other when they viewed the total eclipse. I would like to believe that millions of Christians felt this awesome connection to God when they viewed the eclipse. After the solar eclipse that took place on April 8th, I remembered a significant detail about what happened when Jesus was crucified on the cross. Could it be this detail involved a solar eclipse?

"Now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land" (Matthew 27:45). The sixth hour until the ninth hour would have been from noon to 3 p.m. Was there a solar eclipse when Jesus died on the cross? Was these three hours of darkness in the middle of the day confined to Jerusalem where Christ was crucified? The text says, "...over all the land." According to information I read online, a total solar eclipse can vary from a few seconds to 7.5 minutes. The crucifixion of Jesus was an event that took place at one time in one place. In a real sense it was an eternal event because through His death on the cross, He provided the once for all sacrifice through which we can be forgiven of our sins and reconciled to holy God. If God orchestrated an eclipse that lasted three hours, perhaps it was a once for all eclipse to accompany a once for all crucifixion.

One other piece of significant information related to the eclipse comes not from the Bible but from scientist. If I heard correctly, earth is the only place in our solar system where a known solar eclipse takes place. There is no knowledge of it happening on any other known planet. To me this detail is not incidental or accidental. It is designed by God. These perspectives are all in the eye of the beholder.

God has given us the marvelous gift of physical sight which is only one of several bodily functions which enables to be functional in life. When we read about the miracles that Jesus performed during His earthly ministry, many of them involved restoring bodily functions. He gave the blind their sight, enable the deaf to hear, made the lame to walk, delivered the epileptics from seizures and even cast out demons and evil spirits from the possessed.

When we think about using the gift of physical sight and the other bodily functions with which God has equipped us, we need to look beyond the physical to focus on the spiritual. The Christ that restored physical sight to the blind also spoke about the awful condition of spiritual blindness. "Having eyes, do you see? and having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember" (Mark 8:18)? In Matthew's gospel Jesus cited the Old Testament prophet Isaiah to depict the spiritual consequences of spiritual blindness.

"And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says, 'Hearing you will hear and shall not understand, and seeing you will see and not perceive; For the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them'" (Matthew13: 14,15).

Ironic as it may seem, according to Jesus our great need is to be blind. "Jesus said to them, 'If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, 'We see.' Therefore your sin remains" (John 9:41). In this verse of scripture, again Jesus is speaking from a spiritual perspective. Only by being blind to our own self-righteousness can we see the need to receive the gift of God righteousness which comes only from and through Jesus Christ. As long as you see yourself sufficient in your own righteousness, you will not seek the righteousness that comes by faith in Christ.

I thank God for all the expressions of beauty He has placed before our eyes. Most of all I thank Him for opening my spiritually blind eyes. Praise God there was a time when He enabled me to see my spiritually bankrupt condition. I became blind to my innocence, blind to my justification and the guilt of others, blind to my self-righteousness of which I had absolutely none and blind to my rationality which made me right and everyone else wrong.

Praise God, in my blindness, then I saw! I saw God's mercy, grace and love. I saw a Savior that loved me without reservation and was willing to cleanse, heal and forgive. It was a beautiful sight to see. Beauty was in the eye of the beholder as I saw God's so great a salvation through the eyes of faith.

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. What do you see through your eyes?