Look Up

Teaching my girls to drive I have to remind them to look up. Too often they get preoccupied with the speedometer, cruise control, mirrors, or other things inside the car. Invariably this causes the car to start drifting out of its lane. I have to remind them to look up. Their attention needs to be primarily on the road ahead. They can glance briefly at other things, but they can't take their eyes off the road ahead for very long.

I think we can learn a valuable spiritual lesson from that. We have many day-to-day concerns and activities that can distract us. There are many joys of life that can capture our attention. We can begin to focus on our lives here-and-now. And I'm not even talking about sinful things, just things that are temporal, physical. Spiritually we can become distracted, take our eyes off of the road ahead and even forget where we are trying to go.

In 2 Peter 1:2-9 the apostle exhorts his readers to give diligence to growing in the faith. He lists virtue, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness and love as character traits we are to be adding to our faith. In verse 9 he says,

For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. 2 Peter 2:9

Peter said that those who lacked the virtues he had listed were short-sighted, even to the point of blindness. Such a man has lost sight of his goal. Having "received great and precious promises" and having "escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust" (v 4) he isn't giving diligence to "make [his] calling and election sure" (v 10). He has forgotten he was cleansed of his old sins (v 8). He is ignoring the warning in Hebrews 2:3, "How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?"

In 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 Paul says that the things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are not seen are eternal. Spiritually we need to see through the physical to the eternal. We need to keep our eyes on the eternal goal and on the path God has laid out for us to follow. We can afford an occasional glance at the scenery of the journey, but we can't afford to take our eyes off our road for long.

-PG