Friday, March 09, 2012

Lord, Throughout These Forty Days...17

John encourages all Christ-followers to love God, the Father and not the world. He even deliniates what he means listing the characteristics of the world. In the wilderness temptation, Jesus deals successfully with these same issues.

"the lust of the eyes..."

John says that the desires of our eyes -- our looking and seeing -- draw us away from the Father and toward the world of things. "The eyes are the windows to soul." "If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!"

The First Parents saw that the forbidden fruit's beauty and ate. Israel saw that Moses was a long time returning from the mountain and made a beautiful golden calf to worship in place of the Living God. Jesus had been shown the splendor of the whole world of manish domination. He chose to worship the Lord only.

 The tempter promised our First Parents' eyes would be opened. Their vision expanded.The writer of Proverbs says our eyes are never satisfied.Later Jesus would teach that His followers would be foolish to trade their true selves in exchange for even the whole world. We see what we look at.

Set the Lord before you and no other object of worship, no other goal. Like our Lord, we find the way through the wilderness in the direction of that Beautific Vision.

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