Healthy Eyes and Being a Light
Luke 11:33-36
I’m continually overwhelmed with all the interesting and exciting details I learn as I am reading through the book of Luke. I’ve challenged myself to share one thing from each chapter, and for some chapters that’s a pretty easy challenge as one thing stands out to me more than another. At other times, it’s so difficult to pick just one thing to focus on. And sometimes, my inability to decide or my feeling that a larger explanation is needed results in a very lengthy post.
I think it’s the teacher in me that doesn’t want my readers to miss any of the good things I’ve been learning. But, there is sometimes wisdom in editing, and today, I think I’m going to have to edit all I want to talk about down to just one Jewish idiom from chapter 11, or we could be here for a very long time indeed!
There really are just so many details in this chapter that excite me:
The way Jesus follows The Lord’s Prayer with teaching about what persistence can accomplish and how a good father responds to a child’s request.
The mention of “the finger of God,” which seems to reference the rescue of Israel from Egypt and the establishment of them as a nation.
The sign of Jonah, which I have always heard as symbolic of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, but which might be more than that or not that at all.
How Jesus’ way of addressing the generation as wicked alludes to the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32 (see verse 5).
The woes to the religious rulers that tie into the idiom I’m going to look at and how they might also tie in with the sign of Jonah as it has to do with repentance.
Those are all great things for you to dive into and meditate upon on your own because today, I’m editing what I want to share. :)
Today, I want to talk about being light and having healthy eyes.
Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are healthy, your whole body is full of light. But when they are unhealthy, your whole body is full of darkness. Luke 11:34 (NIV)
Right before this verse, we find a verse that repeats something we have heard before: No one hides a lit lamp. They put it on a stand so it can help all who enter to see. We last saw a teaching using this figure back in chapter 8, verses 16-18. There, it was linked to how you listen.
If you had good ears, you would not just hear the words being taught, but you would respond to them and do what you were being taught.
In this usage of the lamp on the stand, here in chapter 11, it is being linked to having a healthy eye or a good eye.
I first learned about the meaning of having a “good eye” when listening to Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus by Lois Tverberg as I was vacuuming churches and offices when my husband was unable to do so after his injury a little over a year ago. I can actually remember the exact place I was vacuuming when I heard this part about a good eye. I was about halfway through vacuuming the sanctuary at my church. It was one of those things that was that memorable.
Here’s what Tverberg has to say about good and bad eyes and a link so you can read the full article from which I took this and which happens to be based on chapter 5 of the book I was listening to.
“Having a “good eye” (ayin tovah) is to look out for the needs of others and be generous in giving to the poor. To have a “bad eye” (ayin ra’ah) is to be greedy and self-centered, blind to the needs of those around you.” (Lois Tverberg, ourrabbijesus.com, “A Good Eye or A Bad Eye? A Cryptic but Critical Idiom”)
And if I look in the footnotes of the NIV Bible I’m using, it states that, in verse 34, healthy implies generous and unhealthy implies stingy. So, good eye and healthy eye are interchangeable here.
So let’s look at Luke 11:34 again and substitute in some words.
Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are healthy (good, generous, looking out for the needs of others), your whole body is full of light. But when they are unhealthy (bad, stingy, greedy, self-centered), your whole body is full of darkness. Luke 11:34 (NIV)
Notice that the verse begins with our eyes = our light/lamp. The verse right before this is about setting a lamp on a stand so that those who come in may see the light. So… if we set our eyes on a stand – I know that sounds weird, but stick with me – they will give light to others based on how healthy/good or unhealthy/bad they are.
If I’m generous, my light is shining brightly. If I’m stingy, greedy and totally self-centered, my light isn’t going to do much good for anyone. It’s not going to keep them from stumbling and falling. It’s not going to help them enter God’s kingdom.
Let me toss in another verse here because it is one that the Spirit brought to my mind as I was studying.
This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. (1 John 1:5 NIV)
I’m going to combine that verse with Luke’s passage about the eye here in chapter 11 and draw a conclusion.
While we might struggle with being self-centered and greedy sometimes – meaning our light gets contaminated with darkness and our eyes aren’t completely healthy – God’s light never dims. Not once. Not ever. Not even a miniscule amount.
He is generosity goals. God = perfectly generous. In fact, He’s generous even when the cost is beyond comprehension.
And let me just clearly state that I’m not equating generosity with mere tangible items.
As Jesus will say in the next chapter of Luke: life does not consist of an abundance of possessions and life is more than food, and the body more than clothes (Luke 12:15, 23 NIV).
Yes, we need to be generous with all of those things – as Jesus says in Luke 11:41, “be generous to the poor.”
But let’s not forget to be generous with heavenly treasures – forgiveness, justice, grace, mercy, love, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, joy, etc. – because it’s only because of God’s generosity with such things that we can become co-heirs with Christ. It is His generosity that allows us to become part of His kingdom.
So as we walk out into our world - whatever that might look like to us - let’s take a generous heart with us. Let’s use good ears to hear the teaching of Jesus on this and let Him give us healthy eyes that see and meet the needs around us, both the tangible and the intangible ones. So let’s…
Put an extra dollar (or more) in our pocket for that panhandler at the intersection.
Listen and watch for how we can bless others.
Put a smile and kind word on our lips to share with those who need to see some joy because they are running short on that - so short that they might be rather unpleasant.
Fill up our spiritual basket with the fruit of the Spirit and pass that fruit out as often as possible.
Set our good eyes on a stand and let our light shine!
