Thursday, December 25, 2014

Spiritual sight

In Psalms 119:18-19, the Psalmist prays:
"Open my eyes that I might see
Wonderful things in your law
I am a stranger on earth
Do not hide your commands from me."

In Chinese, this reads:
求你开我的眼睛
使我看出你律法的奇妙
我是在地上寄居的
求你不要向我隐瞒你的命令。

It's interesting these days for me to deconstruct the Chinese language. The Chinese have such an ancient history leading back 2,500 years and they used to serve 上帝,the Most High God. Many of the Chinese characters can be deconstructed to show the Chinese knew stories from the Bible. For example, the word 船,or boat, is made up of three separate characters... A vessel, and eight people. Now we know that Noah and his family (wife, 3 sons and their wives) went into the ark, a total of eight persons.

Back to this passage in Psalms. It is telling that the word hide "隐瞒"is made up of a few characters. One is 急,or busy, rushed, harried.
The other is 目, or sight.
The others I need to ask my Chinese speaking friends haha.

But it struck me that in the Bible, spiritual sight or revelation/ understanding is so key to the prophetic, especially to the seers.

God said to Amos, "What do you see?"
He said to Jeremiah, "What do you see?"
He said to Zechariah, "What do you see?"
The same is true for Ezekiah and so on and so forth.

What gets in the way of spiritual sight? One hindrance is busyness, a rushing about. In Chinese, the word busy 忙 can be deconstructed to mean 心 (heart) and 亡 (dead). Sobering.

On the other hand, the greatest commandment is to love The Lord with all our hearts (尽心)or to pursue him wholeheartedly or with one heart (一心).

In 2015, am praying that The Lord opens up my spiritual sight that I may see Him and know His heart. Praying that the busyness and hurriedness that all us city dwellers fall prey to will be something I overcome. Seeking The Lord about the rest that is synonymous with the Jubilee here in Singapore.

Without vision, the people perish. May The Lord open our eyes that we may have eyes to see. Amen.