Eye Exam

TO READ: Revelation 3:14-22

I advise you to buy gold from me —gold that has been purified by fire. Then you will be rich. Also buy white garments from me so you will not be shamed by your nakedness, and ointment for your eyes so you will be able to see.

Revelation 3:18

The Laodiceans were familiar with the famous medical school that had produced a powder for the cure of ophthalmia, an eye disease affecting many people in the East. Again Jesus uses a familiar illustration to open their eyes to spiritual realities. “Buy . . . ointment for your eyes so you will be able to see” (Revelation 3:18), he counsels the unbelieving believers.

Though they think themselves clothed in their religion, Christ tells them they are “wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked” (Revelation 3:17), pointing out how obnoxious spiritual pride is in God’s sight.

But listen —God is counseling his own. Lukewarm they might be, but God’s people they most surely are —and he would be a wonder of a Counselor to them, a Mighty God, their Everlasting Father, their Prince of Peace. Jesus offered them his rightness for their wrongness, urging them to dress their spirits in such a garment of grace that they would “not be shamed by [their] nakedness” (Revelation 3:18).

He stands at the door of every lukewarm heart. He wants to come into our uninterested lives and bring his cup of rejoicing with him. He would meet us inside our shallow spirituality and heat our cooling ardor into bright flames of love.

Enter my heart,

My loving Lord,

Take not a part but the whole —

Quicken my spirit,

Warm my cold mind,

And set me on fire in my soul!