Curiosity and the Desire to SEE

“The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.”

—1 Corinthians 2:14 (TNIV).

How boring a life it would be if we could only see with our own eyes—if that perception was the only one available to us? This is somewhat a strange concept, for surely we can only see through our own eyes. Yes, this is certainly true on a physical level; but what about the issue of spiritual sight?

The eye is a marvellous and miraculous organ—with our eyes we make perhaps more sense of our senses than we do with our hearing, tongues, skin or olfactory sense. I did say, perhaps.

Spiritually, however, the eye is even so much more than it is on the physical level. With this type of sight we get the option of seeing without the aid of our own eyes—we “see” with the eyes of the mind and heart; we can see through ‘the eyes’ of another person’s sense and meaning, even to God’s will.

This is the wonder of that different set of eyes; a sight altogether foreign—and in that, interesting—sparking our curiosity, if we’re so inclined… if we’re spiritually discerning (referring to the quote at top).

We’re deceived if we think we see better or truer than others—the truth is they see just a different reality to us, period.

Sure, their sight may look skewed from time to time but our sight of things is just simply different... there’s more shades of grey and less black and white than we realise.

If we do believe we see better than others that’s just plain destructive pride talking—and we know where that’s taking us, don’t we? To the pit, that’s where. What happens with people caught in pride? They’re not too far from a fall. This is sight that’s not attending to the Spirit’s inspiration; it’s a spiritually-negated sight.

It pays to be inquisitive in life; curious to the core. And there are so many very endearing advantages in our healthy curiosity. We become other-focused and begin to desire more of this holistic spiritual sight.

The greatest advantage is, however, we begin to epitomise our Lord, who is intrinsically curious about our lives and our spiritual relationships, with him and with those others around and about us.

And God’s sight is incredibly incisive, revealing many incredible spiritual things of truth and wisdom to us, if we’re only even the slightest bit curious. Is this mustard-seed curiosity?

And when the scales have been removed from our eyes, and we approach God regularly with the eyes of our hearts and minds open we’re richly blessed with sight eternally beyond what we can actually see.

© S. J. Wickham, 2009.