The Gift Of Spiritual Vision

The Gift of Spiritual Vision

I look up to the mountains—does my help come from there? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth!

Psalm 121:1-2

Perhaps music isn’t how you best connect with God. Maybe you are visually sensitive and observant, so you see God in moments all throughout your days. If so, God has blessed you with spiritual vision. In devotional times, you can quite naturally (without a lot of effort) visualize that the Lord is your shepherd, willing to carry you on his shoulders like a lamb when you’re weary. This mental picture helps you connect with God. You may also clearly perceive his love in the raindrops and in the first rays of morning sun—in the small, quiet moments—not just in spectacular events.

Visualizing God’s truth in nature or picturing him in our mind’s eye is one of the ways he’s given us to connect with him. And it’s biblical. Psalm 139:8-12 tells us that if we go to the heights of heaven, God is there; and even in the darkest places, God’s light shines. If we “ride the wings of the morning” or go to the farthest oceans, he is there as well.

As we read in today’s verses, when the psalmist looks up to the mountains, he has the spiritual vision to see that his help comes not from the mountains but from the One who made them. In every season there is a visual panorama of beauty that God created to reveal himself to us and to draw us closer: the delicate blue wings of a dragonfly, majestic pines standing in the snow, tiny green shoots of grass in the spring, millions of stars lighting the night sky, a field of vivid orange and yellow tulips. When we feel disconnected from the Lord or our eyes have been clouded by the dust of the problems swirling about us, we can ask him to open our eyes to really see his awe-inspiring creation. It offers us glimpses of God’s grace in a new way. —CHERI

Creator of all, please touch my eyes so that I can see you in the myriad colors, sights, and wonders of your creation all around me.

Beauty is God’s handwriting—a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.

—RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803–1882), AMERICAN ESSAYIST AND POET