Open Eyes

October 25

Jeremiah 46-47

Psalm 119:17-24

Proverbs 25:25-26

Hebrews 6:13-20 

Open Eyes

“Open my eyes, that I may behold wonderful things from Your law.  I am a sojourner in the Earth; do not hide Your commandments from me.”  Psalm 119:18-19 LSB

As we saw yesterday, David cherished God’s Word and he knew that it was a valuable resource to keep him from sin.  Today’s passage is an earnest prayer asking God to open his eyes to the truths found in His Word.  David recognized that God’s Word is complicated and can be difficult to understand.  He knew that he could not expect to grasp the full meaning contained in it without God’s help.  He did not have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit available to believers since the crucifixion to help him study God’s Word and to illuminate its meaning, but he asked God to open his eyes to the wonderful things in His Law.  Even though we do have the wisdom of the Holy Spirit available to us, studying God’s Word requires diligent effort.  We would be wise to pray David’s prayer whenever we read the Bible and ask God to open our eyes so that we can understand and see the wonderful things He wants to teach us from His Word. 

Verse 19 expresses the tension between our lives here on Earth and the hope of our heavenly home.  A sojourner is someone who is abiding somewhere temporarily.  He knows it is not his home and yet he is residing there for a time.  It is different from someone who is travelling.  A traveler doesn’t set up residence in the new place.  He may get a hotel room for a few days, but he doesn’t set up a home.  The sojourner establishes himself in his new residence, but there is a recognition that it isn’t permanent, one day he will go home.  As believers that is the reality we live in.  We are here on Earth for a time.  We have a residence and we set up a home.  We establish a life with our loved ones.  But we also recognize that this isn’t where we are going to be forever.  We may stay many years, but someday, we are going home.  The interesting thing is that home is a place we have never been before.  We don’t really know what it’s like, at least not in the sense that we have memories of it or even a picture of it.  But it is a place we long for in the depths of our soul.  We don’t long for the place so much as we long for Who we know is there.  Our Lord and Savior, our bridegroom, is waiting for us.  He has gone to prepare our home for us and He is coming again one day to take us to be there with Him (John 14:2-3).   David understood that while we wait for Him, the best thing we can do is get to know our Savior through reading and studying His Word so that when we are with Him we will be intimately familiar with Him and all His ways.  Open our eyes, Lord, and help us see You in the pages of Scripture.