Oh, there are ordinary glasses,
of course. And if you’re old enough, they’re spectacles. Sometimes
we hide behind dark glasses, or make a fashion statement with our shades.
If the lenses are thick enough, we call them coke bottles or goggles. The
sufficiently stuffy may carry a lorgnette—one of those glasses on a stick
affair. If you can remember back to the Roosevelt administration—Teddy,
not Franklin—you’ll see that light set of glasses known as a pince-nez.
It’s French for “nose pincher.”
All these are forms of the
optical device which corrects your vision. One thing they also have in
common is this: they need to be cleaned, frequently. Dust, dirt,
dandruff, it matters not. You have to clean them to see through them.
Have you ever considered that you
might be “glasses” to see God? It’s true: the man with the pure
heart is the one who will see God. It’s as if God were saying that
nothing but all of you, kept in purity, will work to allow you to see
Him. King David put it this way:
Who may ascend
into the hill of the LORD? And who may stand in His holy place? He who has
clean hands and a pure heart, Who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood And
has not sworn deceitfully.
(Psa
24:3-4 NASB)
It’s true: the pure heart
is needed if you are to see God and go up to Him. But just as your
glasses need cleaning regularly, so does your heart. How does one obtain
and keep a pure heart?
· David,
in his sin with Bathsheba, knew that he could not do it by himself. So he
asked God to create that pure heart within him (see Psalm 51).
· But
for most of us, the problem is not creating the pure heart—but keeping it.
But there too we find our
solution in God.
But a man must
examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the
cup. For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does
not judge the body rightly. For this reason many among you are weak and sick,
and a number sleep. But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged.
But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be
condemned along with the world.
(1Co
11:28-32 NASB)
If you will submit to the
examination of your soul, and accept the discipline your Lord prescribes for
it, you will keep the pure heart—and someday, you will see God.