Enlighten the Eyes of Your Heart

πεφωτισμένους τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς τῆς καρδίας ὑμῶν

Open the eyes of my heart Lord, 

Open the eyes of my heart, 

I want to see You. I want to see You.

What goes round comes round, and one thing leads to another, especially during Epiphany Season.

Many Christians read some sort of a daily devotional, some folks journal, some simply open the Bible and start reading, some have a disciplined Bible reading plan, some follow the Sunday or Daily Office Lectionary. Many have a book such as My Utmost For His Highest by Oswald Chambers. A favorite of many Episcopalians is Forward Day By Day. During my growing up years there was always a copy of Foward in the house, that tiny book, just pocket-size, that was available in the tract rack at church. It’s also offered in large size, and naturally now available online. http://forwardmovement.org/Today-s-Meditation/  In fact, the “light” image above is their banner, which I have no right using, but it happened to be so perfect this morning.

Surprisingly, perhaps astonishingly for one of my very different biblical perspective, mine is Days of Praise that is waiting in my email every morning from The Institute for Creation Research. It gives me another perspective from my own. More, the author, HMM III, is a bright scholar whose Hebrew and Greek knowledge is often helpful to me. Just so this morning, turning on lightbulbs.

There was a period in the life of our parish when we sang lots of “praise songs” from the evangelical and pentecostal branches of the Church. Not to be cute, clever or cryptic, but that was a period that does not want revisiting and I’m not going there this morning; but one of the songs we sang often was “Open the Eyes of My Heart.”

Open the eyes of my heart Lord, 

Open the eyes of my heart, 

I want to see You. I want to see You. (2x)

Shining in the light of Your glory.

Pour out Your power and love, 

As we sing holy, holy, holy.

Holy, holy holy. Holy, holy, holy.

Holy, holy, holy, I want to see You. (2x)

“Eyes of the heart” is a strange image, but it’s a delightful metaphor that, as HMM III reminded me this morning, is entirely scriptural, comes from Ephesians 1:18:

πεφωτισμένους τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς τῆς καρδίας ὑμῶν 

enlighten the eyes of your heart

What goes round comes round, and what came round to me this morning is this praise song, that now is going round in my mind.

TW+